Associated Physician’s Group is a large, eight provider, three office, dynamic group practice, providing pain management, physical therapy and chiropractic services in southern Illinois. Before working with Precision, APG had been internally programming software for use in supporting its practice, attempted integrating that software with third party software systems, had an in-house programming and IT staff, and performed medical billing services in-house.
In essence, APG was very much providing “self-help” in all those important back office categories, and over time, we felt like we were not optimizing our systems and getting bottom line results as we should. In addition, we knew that moving to an electronic health record software would be imperative and we wanted the best, most customizable and cost effective system we could find.
We decided to engage Precision Practice Management to assist our practice in advancing our technology and systems. We started with a conversion from our old billing system to an electronic health records system. Precision helped us download our patient demographic, insurance and appointment scheduling data into our EHR and we quickly confirmed that system allowed APG to track data and manage revenue in a much more efficient manner.
While the implementation and training process was rough on our end because we had so many legacy systems and processes to deal with, we found ourselves quickly headed in the right direction with Precision’s assistance. Once we learned all of the “ins-and-outs” of what our EHR software had to offer and educated our staff on how to appropriately navigate the various screens, we found that we had an outstanding tool at our disposal.
While our conversion to an EHR system has been and will always be a “work in progress”, we quickly saw opportunities for efficiencies. Precision’s EHR support staff has been easy to work with and has provided very effective ongoing training as necessary. To this day, long after the initial system install has been done, Precision’s staff continually checks in on a weekly basis and offers any assistance that we need.
As we went along, we determined that it was necessary to replace some outdated equipment and reconfigure our legacy network. We realized that to remain competitive and to uphold a now expected level of efficiency; updates would produce a very positive return, despite the costs. Precision made recommendations and assisted in the equipment replacements and upgrades, all of which have greatly added to the way our overall network and software systems function.
Next, several months after our EHR install had commenced, although we started off working completely in-house with respect to our medical billing services, we found great value in having Precision give us big-picture advice on how to improve our internal billing operations. They suggested changes in our workflow and provided the training necessary to improve our billing results.
Precision helped us set up a financial forecast related to those changes and conducted monthly meetings to assess progress. Precision also provided ongoing advice and support when we had questions. With Precision we feel like we always have expertise available to us that we can call upon when we need it.
