Baylor Scott & White
How BSW streamlines operations using automation & closed-loop routing
Summary
Baylor Scott & White added the zPaper platform to quickly gain efficiencies within the end-to-end document journey and communication process for patient referrals.
Overview
Baylor Scott & White Health is a non-profit collaborative healthcare system that encompasses one of the nation's largest multi-specialty group practices. The organization provides personalized, comprehensive, high-quality care enhanced by medical education and research to Central Texans in a 29,000 square-mile area.
Challenge
Previously, Baylor Scott & White Health used a fax-based Physician Referral Network (PRN), which relied on physical pieces of paper, multiple fax solutions, filing cabinets, and spreadsheets to schedule patients. Consequently, referring physician offices continued to face challenges about the time required to obtain referrals and the lack of communication by the scheduling teams.
Manually processing large amounts of documents presented another set of challenges, especially in instances where the referring physician's office did not initially include all the relevant patient information. Even upon scheduling a referral, it was rare for the referring office to update the status of the patient. The PRN department received 140 faxes per day and the utilized fax solutions were often malfunctioning. Each of the received documents was manually obtained from the fax solution, sorted, logged, then filed away. This resulted in few physicians receiving the necessary confirmation that appointments have been scheduled. Additionally, supporting information provided often went missing.
Recognizing the need for faster communications, as well as the attention to any patient and physician information shared between referral sources and physician referral network teams, the health system decided to leverage Salesforce to automate and streamline highly manual processes. This including the decision to implement the zPaper Platform.
Approach
Utilizing the zPaper platform; once a fax is received, a new referral record is automatically created with the digital fax attached. Caller ID technology links the referral to the referring practice record and routes it automatically to the appropriate agent based on the fax number used.
The individual working on the referral can separate the fax into multiple files or multiple referrals, make the appropriate notations, and automatically acknowledge receipt by using an outbound template which is dynamically populated and automatically sent with zPaper. This resulted in consistent communication methods that previously did not exist. Now, not only are referral requests quickly acknowledged, the referring physicians receive daily reports that show where each patient is within the referral process. As part of its internal tracking, the solution creates weekly reports for the BSW department leads that provide helpful operational insights around the referral document status.
The Results
Following the zPaper implementation, noticed a 50% increase in response rates on survey questions that asked whether or not a referred patient was seen by a reasonable date.
“zPaper's platform ensures the organization has a seamless, closed-loop process."
- Baylor Scott & White
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