Building Trust: Why a Major Tennessee Health System Stands Behind Vyne Medical’s Solutions
Discover a leading health system’s strides in order management and administrative efficiency after integrating tools designed for healthcare’s unique workflows.
As a nationally acclaimed, multi-hospital health system, Tennessee’s Erlanger aims to deliver the highest quality care at the lowest cost to the diverse populations of Chattanooga. Anchored by a leading academic medical center, Erlanger treats more than 1,000,000 patients annually, providing personalized experiences across all patient access points.
Erlanger’s evolution: From fax machines to digital automated operations
“What really drew us to [Vyne Medical] was orders but then there were all these other perks we realized we were going to get with it, and those have been a huge help,” shared Candi McDougal, Patient Access Director at Erlanger.
“I think without [Vyne MedicalⓇ’s solutions] we would literally have a hard fax machine, orders coming in, and sticking them in a book by patient last name,” Candi explained. “We would be ancient. We would be in the Stone Age as far as processes. That is how we were with some of our older systems before we relied on Trace fully.”
The TraceⓇ platform from Vyne Medical, a suite of healthcare-specific products, harnesses automation to complete the front end’s mundane, manual tasks like capturing, managing, and exchanging disparate healthcare data.
Essential tools for efficiently managing healthcare’s front-end tasks
“Especially now after integrating, we see without [Vyne Medical] we would definitely be back in the paper, back in accordion folders, and then literally walking around the room when the patient calls to see where the folder was and who has that patient’s order,” detailed Candi. “We love Trace, and now, we aren’t printing. Even if an office emails us an order, we PixCert® it and upload it straight into the patient’s chart, so it’s saved us in many ways.”
PixCert, an innovative tool in the Trace suite of products, easily captures on-screen images and integrates with Erlanger’s EMR system to index images directly to the patient’s record.
“We love PixCert,” said Candi. “Having things in the medical record quickly and not having to upload and then upload to Epic; instead, they are flowing over automatically, so that is a huge win.”
Maximizing productivity by streamlining order management
“Our orders management has increased productivity significantly,” Candi shared. “It’s allowed our orders management team to work from home, so that’s been a huge blessing to that position because there was so much paper and printing. It saved on supplies and saved us a position. We thought we’d be able to reallocate the duties of one orders management person, and we truly have been able to with this integration.”
“We’ve been able to focus more on that extra person being in the call queue and taking incoming scheduling phone calls and the other person primarily focused on order management. [When] it was two [people] full-time, we weren’t even near finished at the end of the day. We aren’t having any of that with one person, so that’s been huge.”
“Our pre-certification team no longer has to keep going to websites. We don’t have to print things out again,” said Candi. “We aren’t having to pull from the fax machine approvals coming in and then having to scan them to yourself, upload them to your documents, and finally somehow get them into Epic. If there’s something that goes along with the insurance company with that test or that surgery then [the pre-certification team] is able to go to that patient’s media manager and look at that approval just as easily as we could. This has sped up the time of having to provide documents between departments.”
Accelerating processes with easy access to essential information
Capturing essential patient and payer conversations for Erlanger and providing easily accessible proof for overturning denials, Vyne Medical’s voice recording solution streamlines the health system’s communication for enhanced productivity.
“We can also now listen to approvals [directly from our EMR system] and since sometimes we have to prove what we’ve done or prove that phone call, it being [easily accessible] for whoever needs to listen has been very helpful. If we get a denial on the back end, then we have to provide that in writing so now it’s [in the patient’s record]. With [phone conversations] being there, we don’t have to go and pull them from the pre-cert call, upload them, and send them. They are there to listen to and see that we have the approval.”
When concerns arose during integration over the potential for human error when typing tracking numbers, Vyne Medical promptly worked with Erlanger teams to find a solution. “The [Vyne Medical] team was able to create a worklist that we could look at and audit because when you are typing a number, human error is going to happen. It won’t be the norm, but it is going to happen, so you need to prepare for it. [Vyne Medical teams] had a work queue made where we can make sure that if there is something mismatched, we get that order loaded quickly.”
Why Erlanger teams champion Vyne Medical’s Trace platform
“We are an advocate for Trace. I had a phone call with another company, and they said they were going to go away from Trace when they upgraded to a new system, and I said oh, that would be the worst mistake of your lives,” Candi explained. “I said [Vyne Medical] will only enhance your process, so they are really second-guessing and reaching out to me for some more information. Honestly, [Vyne Medical] is amazing to work with.”
“The enhancements, the integration, the time, the resources that [Vyne Medical’s solutions] save is hands down,” shared Candi. “When we have a need and have to talk to someone, the customer service, the quality, the ease of that is literally like none other. I can tell you from experience that it was a pleasure to work with Vyne Medical. It was a huge ask and a huge project, and it went very well. I would tell [clients considering Vyne Medical’s solutions] to just do it. Vyne Medical is the best.”
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