MGMA Business Solutions: Streamlining Post-Acute Care Coordination
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another business solutions podcast, and we are gonna present to you some information that also ties into an upcoming MGMA webinar. I wanna give a plug for that. That webinar is reducing physician practice Real World Results from Implementing e Signature for Home Health Orders.
Daniel Williams:So to put that on your calendar, that is July 31, and that event is sponsored by Forcura. And we have some people from Forcura today joining us today. Kate Warnock, senior director of communications, and Maya Wojnovich, a product expert also at Forcura. I just want to welcome you both to the show.
Kate Warnock:Thanks so much. Great to be here.
Daniel Williams:Alright. So let's get started. As we do with all of our podcasts, we wanna get to know a little bit about our guests. So, Kate, I'll start with you. I'd love to just get a little quick intro to understand who you are and what your background is just to share that with that MGMA audience.
Kate Warnock:Oh, thanks so much, Daniel. So as you said, I'm senior director of communications and also brand strategy here at Forcura, which is a health care technology company based here in Jacksonville, Florida. Before joining Forcura in 2019, I've really spent my entire industry or my entire career in the healthcare industry. So that's now twenty three years, because, you know, I started when I was 16. And so, yeah.
Kate Warnock:So I was on the payer side, for the majority of my career and kinda came up through, all sorts of change. You know, everything from HMOs when they kinda first launched all the way through the Affordable Care Act and, then came to Forcura. Like I said in 2019, I'm now on the technology side and, just find this sector endlessly fascinating.
Daniel Williams:Well, fantastic. Maya, same with you. We'd love to hear about your background.
Maja Vojnovic:Absolutely. So I started off on the more clinical side, and I studied health I studied health sciences in college. And I spent time working in clinics throughout my college career. And then afterwards, I transitioned over to public health during the peak of COVID, actually, where I served as a liaison between one of the Florida Bureau of Public Health Laboratories and art of the software company. So now at Forcura, I am the product owner for Circle, which is our e signature platform for providers.
Maja Vojnovic:And I absolutely love what I do because I can hear what providers and our staff need to deliver better patient care, I get to help enhance circle and deliver solutions to those needs.
Daniel Williams:Alright. Great. Thank you so much for that. Nikhate, you mentioned a little bit about who Forcura is, but if you don't mind, elaborate just a little bit on that and how the company fits in with what our listeners, our medical practice administrators, what they're about and how Forcura can help them in their jobs.
Kate Warnock:That's great. Well, so Forcura launched as a healthcare technology company back in 2012, And our sole focus, from from, the early days has been on the post acute sector. And so we're a technology platform with b to b that serves really primarily the home based care providers. So think home health and hospice and personal care, that sort of thing. And really, we are that intelligent healthcare workflow solution that helps really better manage that patient journey once they're discharged from, you know, an acute setting or if they're referred in from a community physician.
Kate Warnock:We manage all of that documentation. We build in some intelligence there so that our our clients can really use better intelligence to make business decisions that are best for for them and for their patients. And then on the back end too, Daniel, we also help to manage that flow of documentation out to physician groups. So that's why we're here today is talk a little bit more about that. One and one thing too, I would be remiss if I didn't say we were just recently acquired this year and are merging with MetaLogics, which you'll see in our virtual background here.
Kate Warnock:And MetaLogics is really that leading clinical decision support technology also for home health and hospice groups. So really exciting merger. We're just at the start of integrating our solutions. And, But we're here today really to talk about Forcura Circle, which is Maya's expertise.
Daniel Williams:Wonderful. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. And one of the main things we will be talking about is a partnership that the company had with Fierce Healthcare.
Daniel Williams:This was on a survey of physician practice leaders. Share with us what were you looking to find out from this survey and maybe some of the nuggets that you did find out.
Kate Warnock:So, I'll kick off here. It was my project and it was such a, a real, delight to really kind of dive into getting firsthand feedback from people like your audience that are listening today. We really wanted to quantify something that we think might be flying under the radar for a lot of practice managers. And that is what challenge is it for them, their staff, their physicians to coordinate care for post acute patients. So as that documentation is coming into their offices by faxes, by emails, through portals, all the things, there's a lot of work that goes into that.
Kate Warnock:But a lot of people may not be aware just how much time and cost goes into managing what tends to be a very manual process. So that's really what this, Fierce Healthcare report helped us do. We surveyed and got a 111 people to reply and produce all sorts of insights for us.
Daniel Williams:Right. Maya, anything else you wanna share about it?
Maja Vojnovic:Yeah. Just wanna add that we also hope to capture some open text responses to questions like what EHR functionality is most needed to help you better manage coordinating care with your post acute network. And this is like the ability to send electronic referrals for home health health care agencies. And our products are purpose designed around our end users. So we take direct feedback from those end users.
Maja Vojnovic:And so this audience was instrumental in helping us guide our product development.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Well, Maya, let's stay with you for this next question. So according to the information, one third of practices are spending ten or more hours a week on documentation tied to post acute care. That's a lot of time. That is a lot of time being put into that.
Daniel Williams:So what does that mean in practice and how does it impact patient care or even team workflows? Yes,
Maja Vojnovic:definitely a lot of time. It means that time is taken away from patient care, and that can result in delays for patient care coordination and provider payment. So being such a regulatory driven industry, there's a lot of paperwork involved in the post acute care world, and there's a lot of manual effort. So physically signing each order, the time consuming process of sending documentation and waiting on confirmations and manually tracking documents on an Excel spreadsheet, it's all very time consuming. Actually, over one third of practice managers report that their practices have between five and over seven or more staff members managing referrals, and that's also phone calls and faxes all for the care coordination process.
Maja Vojnovic:So the time and resources needed to manage this document workflow poses a financial burden because not it's not only is it, resource expensive, quote unquote, but also because of the delays they create in returning signed orders. Delays means that the provider is not getting paid for the patient care that they provide.
Daniel Williams:Okay. You you mentioned phones and faxes there, Maya. Kate, I wanna turn it to you. What we're learning is phones and faxes are still widely used. They are still in great demand.
Daniel Williams:Let's talk about the strain that can put on practices and how these more, I guess, more modern technological tools can be used to help relieve some of that pressure.
Kate Warnock:You know, Daniel, as as Maya was kind of ticking through those things that we found through this survey, I really bet that a lot of the people listening today were shaking their heads like, that's my practice. Yeah. And they can speak to the pain a lot more eloquently than I'm sure I can. But, you know, again, what we discovered is that this does tend to be a very it it can be very overwhelming to get bombarded with phone calls that are followed up with emails and another ream of faxes that if you are doing this all manually, if you're tracking these things in a spreadsheet, you might have to be physically tracking down who has what copy of what version of this patient's order, which again, it's just it's frustrating and and does not make people feel like they're adding value to what they really want to be doing most. So, you know, again, as we talk about where we see this industry evolving and why we're here today a little bit, is that when you can start to introduce technology that helps to consolidate the process, it's one place for everyone to go into as a source of truth.
Kate Warnock:You really can't start to eliminate that that volume of phone calls and and faxes and such. And one thing that Maya mentioned too, I'm not sure that this audience is as aware of is that especially if you're a home health care provider because of the regulation, even if they've already delivered that those services to to your patient, they're not able to bill for those services until they get this physician's signature back on their record. That then triggers their billing. So if you think about the expense of paying for your staff, your clinicians to go out to the to, to the patient, to make multiple visits, to pay for supplies, all of the back and forth. That's a lot of financial outlay on our, you know, our client side.
Kate Warnock:What we're seeing on the other end of this transaction is all of those same inefficiencies, but not necessarily a lot of, incentive for the physician practice to be managing that documentation in a timely manner. So Maya, think is gonna speak to that a little bit later. But that's again the the incentive for why your practice managers that we're talking today are getting all of these phone calls. It's because they need to get that signature so that they can then do that proper step of billing with that physician's signature on record. So that's that's a little bit of education that that I'm not sure everyone was maybe aware of.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Thank you for that. So Maya, I want to turn to you for the next question. One of the things that really stood out was system fragmentation. That is something that was really out there, and one of the numbers that really stood out was some practices reported, I want to get this right, managing 15 or more portals just for post acute care.
Daniel Williams:So much fragmentation there. Talk about that and the risks that are involved in that.
Maja Vojnovic:So when providers have to access the different ordering for each post acute agency, each of which has different requirements, different login credentials, different links you have to bookmark on your browser. The systems are certainly fragmented, and I can imagine how much frustration that creates in a clinical setting. So as a result, patient information can also be fragmented because it resides in multiple systems and that continuity of care can sometimes be elapsed. The time consuming process of managing this administrative side of countless portals is yet again taking time away from patient care. And it's not just the providers who experience this, it's also the home based care agencies with everything being aggregated on their end
Kate Warnock:too.
Maja Vojnovic:And so there's not a central place to manage all the documentation. It's kind of dispersed all over, and it's definitely a pain point all across the board.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Kate, another number that stood out to me from the survey, only 7% of practices said they're very satisfied with their current coordination process. So 93% are not very satisfied. What is getting in the way of improvement? What what's happening there?
Kate Warnock:You know, isn't it shocking to hear that there are 7% who are very satisfied given all the challenges that we've just ticked off? So, kudos to them. You know? And I I'm I'm glad to hear that that there are some folks who are finding this not really just a burden and overwhelming. But, you know, your question was, what's getting in the way of improvement?
Kate Warnock:I think that there's probably so much that's going on in the back office of of of a provider practice. And this may not be an issue. Again, a challenge that's recognized for creating the burden that it truly is. So I think what's getting in in the way of improvement is just a general awareness issue. There's a gap between this is the way things are and understanding the way things could be.
Kate Warnock:And so what's that's what we went in with Fierce Healthcare was again to really capture what are the challenges and then to really start to quantify it so that we could help to educate this sector, our our practice managers and say, does this sound like you? This is a really horrible process. And, let's start to have a conversation about how things could be better.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Maya, another thing to bring up here, nearly half of the respondents didn't know that they could bill for oversight of post acute care. So what are the billing opportunities that our listeners could should be aware of?
Maja Vojnovic:Sure. So the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System, or HC PCS codes for short, they're used to bill for germline oversight of post acute patient care. For Cura, the Circle platform has streamlined and centralized reporting for these codes, plus some additional data points like the primary diagnosis, time spent for care, and date of service. And so with this reporting feature in Circle, it's built into the platform and gives the provider billing opportunities for that post acute patient care. It can offset also the administrative costs for practices if they do start billing for a virtual clean oversight.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Kate, let's talk about one more, opportunity that we found in the study here. The survey highlighted demand for electronic referrals and real time tracking. So let's talk about those opportunities and how those could be integrated for, medical practices.
Kate Warnock:So for sure. So I think that there's just a general demand for less paper in an office environment. Something that's more centralized. So if what we're seeing is kind of we're talking about and we've quantified what's happening at the end of this one transaction where we have a post acute provider sending documentation that needs to be reviewed and signed and returned. That's the patient care plan.
Kate Warnock:But what could what better could happen, you know, in the future as more of these communications become both digital and real time. But what you're going to get, again, less paperwork in the office and a lot more opportunity to focus on what counts most, which is that patient care. So this is really the direction that Forcura Circle is going in. And, you know, part of our excitement about merging with Metalogics, we know down the line, we really want to serve up patient insights. So be able to share in real time, not just an order about this is the care that we are planning to deliver or our clients are are planning to deliver, but for physician practices to know my patient is getting this sort of service or there has been maybe a change in in that patient's care outcome.
Kate Warnock:Maybe they've had a degradation of of their clinical condition. This is something a physician practice wants to know as much as a home health care provider does too. Right? So this is one patient that's being managed by, you know, a a many different, care care stakeholders. But we really see that primary care physician practice as the quarterback.
Kate Warnock:And so being able to put technology in the hands of both of these stakeholders, all of these clinicians, and again, have one place where patient information can flow seamlessly. That's really what the future should be, and that's where Forcura is is working towards.
Daniel Williams:Okay. I have last question I wanna ask, and I wanna direct it to both of you. We'll start with Maya and end with Kate. But we've been talking a lot about post acute care coordination, but what's a realistic first step that a practice can take if they wanna improve the way that they handle those processes? Again, Maya, let's start with you.
Maja Vojnovic:No. I would say consider licensing for Keurig Snuggle. It's a one stop shop for your entire practice. Our new admin and connectivity features we brought out allow practice managers to centralize all the work they need for the entire practice. One of my favorite things about it is that practice centers can access have access to multiple, if not all, agencies in their post acute network in one portal.
Maja Vojnovic:And I think that's a really big deal. Then how Kate alluded earlier, using Circle can improve the relationship with this post acute number because we see our e signature platform reduce order turnaround time by over half. Plus, in addition to the new enhancements we have made, practice managers now have visibility for documents belonging to all the providers in your practice. And so we've created this this dashboard with the holistic view of all the outstanding orders and have really broken it down by provider, post secure agency, and many more, data points. So I think that'd be a really good step.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Kate, let's hear from you. Have the last word here.
Kate Warnock:Yeah. So, just kind of building again on what Maya said. Part of what that survey did, it really helped to key us into what is it does the physician practice manager need for her to better manage the clinicians, her staff, that sort of thing, within her work environment. So as much as this is meant to help benefit the patient and making sure that that documentation is seen quickly. We also want to remove some of those burdens from that physician practice.
Kate Warnock:So specifically, being able to minimize the administrative burden that's on the physician and put it on the staff that's really designed to manage those things. So, you know, whether it's the portal login credentials or managing sort of adding or deleting their staff, that's something that one person is able to do across the entire practice. So we thought that was really important. And then obviously, maximizing the control that you have over your administration of your entire provider group and your reporting. Again, to have this all instead of disaggregated and and in so many different places, one place to get this information so that you can really administer your practice with that much better clarity and efficiency.
Kate Warnock:So really starting with For Cure Circle is our number one piece of advice.
Daniel Williams:That is great. Well, I wanna thank Kate Warnock, Maya Wojnovich for joining us today. Thank you both so much. This has been great.
Kate Warnock:Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Williams:Alright. Now everybody, a quick reminder for CURA is sponsoring an upcoming MGMA webinar. Going to be on July 31. I do want to remind you it is called Reducing Physician Practice Administrative Burden, Real World Results from Implementing e Signature from Home Health Orders. We're really excited about this offering.
Daniel Williams:It's a free webinar. You do get continuing ed credits for that. What I'm gonna do in the episode show notes is put direct links in there. All you have to do is click that link and go right to it, or you can go to mgma.com/webinars, and you'll find it there as well. So, everybody, I just wanna thank you again for for being MGMA podcast listeners.
Daniel Williams:We'll see you next time. Thanks so much.
