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Baylor Health Care System can better manage contracts and compliance efforts and keep focused on its patients
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 With its focus on the provision of top-quality patient care, Baylor Health Care System (BHCS) was concerned about better managing its contractual relationships with both employed and contracted physicians, as well as keeping track of thousands of supplier contracts, real estate documents and compliance materials. Dallas-based BHCS is a non-profit, faith-based health care system, nationally and locally recognized as a vital link to quality medical care throughout North Texas. |
A growing need to care for contracts
BHCS is a comprehensive network of twelve hospitals, primary care centers and practices, rehabilitation clinics, senior health centers and a research institute. Because each entity handles different types of contracts, there were obvious inefficiencies in managing all the paper-based contracts. "Employees were delayed making decisions until they received copies of relevant files through internal mail, efforts were duplicated due to the lack of centralized information, and time was wasted physically locating, copying and circulating the information," explained John T. Thomas, BHCS general counsel.
The materials management department wanted to improve control of the relationships with its vendors and disseminate vendor information across the entire organization to avoid duplication of effort and contracts. Additionally, BHCS is required to maintain documented compliance with government regulations, such as HIPAA, Stark and the Internal Revenue Code, which translates into keeping a myriad of contracts and licenses current. In the health care domain penalties for noncompliance are significant and easy to incur inadvertently without adequate documentation.
With these issues in mind, Thomas guided BHCS management towards the deployment of an Internet-based, centralized contracts management system to realize greater operational efficiencies and optimize the delivery of patient care.
A new paradigm for a healthy solution
"We were aware that the Texas Hospital Association endorsed MediTract's TractManager® solution for the efficient, central management of health care contracts. We selected TractManager after extensive review because of MediTract's turnkey, application service provider (ASP) model and its ability to handle initial paper-to-digital conversion," explained Thomas.
BHCS contracted with MediTract to execute the conversion and loading of contracts into TractManager. As part of the total solution MediTract supplied multiple HP Digital Sender 9100Cs and its staff scanned and uploaded all contracts. Once the initial load was complete, five HP Digital Senders were left onsite—in the corporate legal department, tax and compliance department, research institute, physician services and material management department—for the ongoing processing of new contracts and documents that need daily uploading.
"During the initial contract load, thousands of contract pages get scanned and processed in a very short period of time. MediTract personnel, using the HP Digital Sender 9100C, produced high quality digital Adobe Acrobat "pdf" images in a password protected database usable by our entire organization. In today's health care environment, providers must have a comprehensive and readily accessible database of its contract information, with the ability to update and review the database instantaneously. MediTract and HP provided the infrastructure to accomplish that task," reflected Thomas.
The BHCS staff utilize HP Digital Senders, located in central work areas, to scan new or additional contract information and automatically e-mail the corresponding digital files. Upon receipt of e-mail messages with the file attachments, MediTract initiates a workflow routine that processes the scanned documents, extracts key data elements, and loads them into the appropriate location in the TractManager database. The software monitors the key data elements and sends e-mail alerts to the contract owners, for example, when contract expiration dates are forthcoming. The solution offers a series of views and functions performed against the database, thereby tailoring it to meet the requirements of each department.
Keeping fit and staying healthy
"We've seen huge benefits from the implementation of MediTract's TractManager solution. The biggest is accessing real-time information from any Internet connection for efficient decision-making and contract compliance reviews," explained Thomas. "From a legal perspective, as BHCS continues to grow, I previously would have needed additional staff to manage the contracts, instead TractManager is a much more cost-effective and efficient solution."
As the use of TractManager expanded within BHCS, the materials management group benefited from seeing a complete view of its vendor relationships, thereby removing any duplication of effort and aggregating its purchasing power. The group uses the system to monitor rebate dates and the staff is prompted to respond before expirations occur to ensure the lowest pricing is achieved. Flagging contracts with an auto-renewal clause permits staff to re-negotiate the best overall deal. Additionally, with the utilization of the HP Digital Senders, BHCS is realizing enormous time-savings on copying and sending documents back and forth between locations.
"Over time, the use of TractManager could potentially save BHCS significant dollars with administrative and contract compliance efforts and help to keep its excellent reputation. You can't put a price on the confidence of knowing that you're operating within contract compliance. TractManager keeps us on top of contract maintenance and the efficiency gains it affords us are enormous," concluded Thomas.
For more information on HP Digital Senders please visit: www.hp.com/go/printingandimaging
Industry: Non-profit healthcare
Challenge
- Reduce difficulty of sharing physical contracts from one location to another
- Better manage contractual relationships with physicians and vendors
- Improve accuracy and speed of processing managed care information requests
- More efficiently maintain compliance with government regulations
Solution
- MediTract's turnkey contracts solution, TractManager® for centralized, efficient contracts management
- HP Digital Sender 9100C for accurate capture of data from paper to digital file
Results
- Confidence of knowing BHCS is operating within contract compliance and avoiding costly penalties
- Real-time access to information from any Internet connection for efficient decision-making
- Cost-efficiencies from enabling existing staff to handle an increasing contract load
At a glance
Company: Baylor Health Care System
Headquarters: Dallas, Texas
Founded: 1903
Employees: 15,000 employees
Telephone: 800-422-9567
URL: www.baylorhealth.com
Primary business: providing quality medical care, as a non-profit, faith-based healthcare system, throughout North Texas.
Partner at a glance
Solution provider: MediTract, LLC
Headquarters: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Telephone: 877-492-8490
URL: www.meditract.com
Primary business: MediTract, LLC is a technology-based contract management company. TractManager® is a technology-based contract management solution serving all sectors of the healthcare industry and providing on-line, real-time access to a customized database of contract information.
©Copyright Hewlett-Packard Company, 2002.
All rights reserved. HP, and the HP logo, are trademarks of the new Hewlett-Packard Company. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Technical information in this document is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved. Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written permission is prohibited except as allowed under the copyright laws.
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