Eastern Health, one of Melbourne’s largest urban public health services, has consolidated its payments system into an enterprise-wide system through a partnership with PowerHealth.
PowerHealth Power Billing and Revenue Collection (PBRC) currently manages billing for the entire patient journey across Eastern Health’s emergency department, inpatient and outpatient, theater and prosthetics, pharmacy, community health intelligence, transition care, ambulatory care, pathology, medical imaging and cardiovascular services.
Besides setting up a single billing system, organizations are also working to set up a librarian that integrates with the PBRC to enable automatic generation of patient correspondence via SMS, email or mail. A handheld electronic device called PBRC Mobile has been delivered to clinicians to record billing services.
In addition, the PBRC has been integrated with the health service refresher system to obtain list of clinicians and assist in identifying potentially under-billed services. The system is also being used for management reporting.
WHY IT IMPORTANT
Eastern Health operates more than 60 facilities that provide more than 1.3 million care visits annually.
In a previous review of its existing system and processing capabilities, the healthcare service found that it did not add some revenue due to the complexity of the process and system.
It then moved on to replace 16 payment systems with an enterprise-wide payments system that simplifies processes, which has so far delivered 19% more financial returns than forecast. its.
According to project director Marina Hocking, tHis implementation of PBRC has achieved improvements in patient experience, as well as increased revenue capture and improved operational efficiency. It also supports the rapid transition to remote working during the pandemic.
Once the implementation is complete, Eastern Health is now working to further improve the system’s integrity and embed the use of business reports to enable data-driven decision making.
TREND TO BIGGER WOMAN
Another Victorian public health service, Albury Wodonga Health, has also integrated its PBRC solution into its cloud-based PAS. Payment system integration is part of digital transformation following the adoption of the DXC Care Suite platform in 2020.
Westmead Children’s Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Center have also implemented similar solutions before.
In other related news, PowerHealth and partner Telstra Health have launched PowerAnalytics, a new digital solution that provides deep analytics and benchmarking to identify useful insights into operational performance and finance in the healthcare sector.
