By Terrence D. Sims, President of Strategic Growth and Marketing, Raintree Systems
Ten years ago, San Antonio-based Airrosti owned nearly a dozen highly successful clinics devoted to helping patients quickly resolve acute or chronic pain through its specialized non-invasive soft tissue treatment and individually prescribed recovery exercises. The company was eager to continue building its patient volume and expanding its clinic network within Texas – and beyond.
The problem was, each location had a different practice management system, primarily manual and paper-based. The lack of centralized electronic scheduling, clinical documentation, reporting and billing was impeding Airrosti’s ability to implement its ambitious growth plans.
Seeking Custom-Tailored Simplicity
Jody Green, now Airrosti’s vice president of application development, was initially brought on board to tackle this roadblock. He thoroughly researched the available practice management software options but struggled to find a good fit. The vast majority were large, complex systems developed for general medical practices and enterprise hospital systems that needed to track dozens of billing codes, generate multiple reports and manage complicated revenue cycles.
Airrosti’s focused treatment and reimbursement model was much simpler, and its technology needs were more straightforward. Green figured it would be a waste of time and money to train administrators and practitioners how not to use 90 percent of a system’s features. Recognizing that Airrosti needed a customizable system that could easily be tailored to the organization’s unique requirements, he zeroed in on our low-code, scalable and innovative medical software solutions that are designed to simply but effectively optimize operations. Even better, we were eager to partner with Airrosti to meet its bleeding edge application needs.
Fueling Continued Growth
Airrosti worked closely with us to customize its scheduling, clinical documentation, billing and patient communication systems, creating a solid foundation for explosive growth over the next decade – and well into the future. Every step of the way, our staff has been there to help customize an existing solution or develop a new one to meet an evolving need, whether it’s a direct referral tool, integrated faxing, automated patient contact reminders or an EMR that clinicians actually like using.
Today, with Airrosti’s use of our low-code platform, it has helped empower and fuel exponential growth, resulting in the company’s expansion to 300-plus locations in five states – with patient volume multiplying 50 times over. In fact, the total number of patients treated annually over a period of ten years has expanded from 17,587 to 842,440.
Green credits the flexible platform with enabling Airrosti’s practice management systems to also scale seamlessly – and cost-effectively. Adding a new location is now a streamlined cookie-cutter process, billing is totally automated and all sites are completely paperless, minimizing back office and labor costs. And as new needs emerge, Airrosti continues to rely on us.
Selecting the Right Partner
Whether your practice focuses on therapy and rehab, bariatrics, pain management, behavioral health or another specialty medical area, you know how challenging it can be to balance administrative demands with your commitment to delivering high quality patient care. The right EMR and practice management systems – and most importantly, the right technology partner – can help you optimize productivity and operational efficiency so you can focus on what you do best.
Here are six key questions to ask when selecting a system and a technology partner:
- What are your strategic business goals? Are you looking to add locations, increase patient volume, boost practitioner satisfaction, improve profitability, expand into telehealth, strengthen patient engagement?
- What functionality and features are your top priorities? Do you want to streamline workflow, enhance reporting, automate patient communication, automate insurance eligibility verification, improve analytics?
- Is the system designed specifically for specialty practices? How well does the system address the needs of your particular specialty? Is it overly complicated? Can it scale with the anticipated growth of your practice?
- How easily can the software be customized? How adaptable is the system’s architecture? How easy is it to customize the clinical documentation, templates, reporting or other solutions to meet the unique and evolving requirements of your practice?
- How user-friendly is the system? Is it intuitive to use? How much training will be required? Does it help your staff work more effectively and allow them to focus more time and energy on patient care?
- Does the technology provider have the qualities you want in a long-term partner? Does the provider share your passion for solving challenges? Is the partner committed to understanding your business model, technology requirements and goals? How willing is the provider to work closely and consistently with you to customize solutions to meet your needs?
From every perspective, growing your specialty medical practice is plenty challenging. Building a relationship with a partner who has the ability to understand, anticipate and innovatively leverage the power of technology to meet your unique needs can help you get exactly where you want to go.
[Source: Raintree Systems]
