New Back-office System Helps Organization Reduce Costs and Capture Lost Revenue
The Client
- Central Clinic, a nationally recognized mental health agency that provides behavioral health, substance abuse, forensic and prevention services
- Employs 200 staff members and provides services to more than 10,000 people annually
- Had a billing and reconciliation system that was not meeting the organization’s needs
What the Client Wanted
- A rebuild of its billing and reconciliation system—originally built by a third-party vendor—that would:
- Enable staff to accurately deal with complex payor relationships such as Medicaid, Medicare, third-party insurance and self-pay
- Enable staff to effectively manage billing to ensure timely reimbursement for services and a steady revenue stream
- Reduce administrative costs, increase productivity, and improve quality of care by enabling staff to focus more on client programs and less on day-to-day operations
- Be simple to use, yet flexible enough to meet the rapidly changing needs of the business
Challenges
- Needed to continue generating revenue while achieving: regulatory compliance, accurate billing for services, a less manually intensive process and the ability to reconcile accounts
LÛCRUM’s Solution
- Implemented a swift, “stop gap” solution to allow Central Clinic to bill for services and keep its revenue stream coming in
- Once the temporary solution was in place, worked with the leadership team to create a strategic plan that aligned IT initiatives with business objectives, “bridging the gap” between business and IT personnel
- Created the design, screens and processes of the billing system rebuild, as well as a plan to deliver the solution
LÛCRUM’s Approach
- Led off-site strategic planning meetings with top leadership of each organization during which critical success factors were jointly determined
- Established ongoing communication channels that included quarterly reviews to continue the “change” momentum and to help overcome any resistance to change in both organizations
Efforts
- Temporary billing system creation and implementation: one month
- Billing system rebuild and implementation: five months
The Benefit
- Reduced effort and time to complete billing (less manual intervention; saving 40+ hours/month)
- Brought Central Clinic into auditing compliance due to reconciliation functionality
- Accurate billing
- Recovery of lost revenue due to increased visibility of service tickets needing billing corrections
“LÛCRUM has been a critical asset in helping ensure that our IT initiatives were aligned with our business objectives and that these initiatives were implemented on plan. LÛCRUM continues to provide services to my organization today. Helping us implement initiatives that make a real difference to my business is invaluable.”
-Walter S. Smitson, Ph.D., President and CEO Central Clinic
