Challenge
One of the nation’s largest operators of general acute care community hospitals identified their physician query process as responsible for lost revenue, physician burden and widespread inefficiencies for Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) and coding staff.
CDI leadership sought an innovative query solution to streamline this critical revenue cycle process, and they had many requirements including:
- A “standalone” application able to integrate with multiple EMR and coding systems that existed across their network
- A fast, convenient workflow for providers not causing them to incur additional time in their day
- Real-time reporting to ensure visibility and accountably with query tracking down to the provider, CDI specialist and coder levels
- Standardization of query templates that could be shared across all facilities and written compliantly according to industry guidelines and best practices
Solution
Artifact’s HIPAA compliant, cloud-based mobile query solution was first deployed to 5 pilot facilities, and after 3 months, rolled out to more than half their facilities in 4 waves over 5 weeks.
After this initial large-scale deployment, the hospital system continued to expand Artifact across all facilities with either the full platform or the Artifact *Light* version, so all facilities shared one compliant template library.
“This is the best software this hospital has ever purchased.”
Physician
Results
Over the last two years, the health system has completely revamped the query process, most especially by engaging providers with a solution they find easy to use. One hospitalist said, “This is the best software this hospital has ever purchased.”
Providers at all facilities are now held accountable for responding to queries and individual performance is easy to identify through Artifact’s reporting. Leadership monitors key performance indicators and targets providers with education where needed. Response rates for the health system increased from 94% to 99% and average response times dropped from 6 days to 2 days.
Productivity greatly increased for CDI specialists and coders by eliminating the time-consuming, manual efforts to get queries answered. As a result, they began to review and query on more charts. Overall, query volume increased by 125% across the health system. A CDI specialist remarked, “Artifact saves me so much time because it’s really simple to write and send queries and get quick responses from physicians.”