Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

Southeastern Regional Medical Center will implement the Allscripts suite of care management solutions to streamline patient care and prepare for Medicare RAC Audits

Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) announced that Southeastern Regional Medical Center will implement the Allscripts suite of care management solutions to streamline patient movement through the hospital, enhance continuity of care across the organization and prepare for Medicare's Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program.

Allscripts care management solutions are Web-based "software as a service" (SaaS) applications that can be deployed quickly and efficiently with minimal IT support. The full suite of care management solutions automates and streamlines the entire care management process in hospitals, from admission through discharge. The result: increased productivity, improved patient throughput, lower claims denials and better health outcomes.
Southeastern Regional Medical Center is a 337-bed facility serving more than 15,000 inpatients and over 71,000 emergency room patients annually. Southeastern also operates a 115-bed long-term care center, homecare services, both in-home and in-patient hospice, the Gibson Cancer Center, and the Southeastern Heart Center managed by the Duke University Health System.

"When selecting an electronic solution, we did our homework and decided that Allscripts is the right partner to help us improve our efficiency, decrease the time we spend charting, and allow us to better manage our patients' health and length of stays," said Teresa Vanderford, Director of Care Management for Southeastern Regional Medical Center. "Allscripts also makes it far easier for us to defend our organization from Medicare audits by proving, quickly and seamlessly, that patient stays were medically necessary."
The RAC program is a national initiative intended to identify and correct improper Medicare payments paid to healthcare providers in fee-for-service Medicare. Hospitals nationwide will be subject to the audits by the Department of Health and Human Services beginning January 1, 2010.

During a RAC audit, third-party auditors can look retroactively as far back as three years to see if hospitals have billed Medicare correctly. Hospitals may have to justify why a patient was admitted and wherever there is a discrepancy, the RAC auditors can take the money back from the hospital. The private contractors conducting the audits are incentivized to keep a percentage of the collections they make from the audits.

"Our goal at Allscripts is to provide software and technology solutions that allow hospitals and the care providers who work at them to focus on providing world class patient care," said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts. "We want to streamline the processes involved in moving patients through their care experience and discharging them efficiently. We also want to ensure that hospitals get adequately reimbursed for care they provide and efficiently provide documentation to reduce any potential risk from oversights on billing. Southeastern Regional Medical Center is well known for delivering quality care and our tools will build on that success while at the same time providing them adequate tools to effectively address any of the new Medicare RAC audits."

Allscripts care management solutions provide both real-time, prospective RAC tracking technology as well as tools that enable organizations to retrospectively manage each RAC case from initial denial through all five appeals levels. Before an auditor even walks through your door, Allscripts Care Management provides reports and worklists. In addition, Allscripts Care Management can provide reporting and alerts based on DRGs, diagnosis and procedure codes that RACs have been focusing on to allow organizations oversight of the current at-risk census population.

About Southeastern Regional Medical Center
As a nonprofit organization, Southeastern is operated by a local board of trustees whose only remuneration is the assurance that they are making available quality health care for their community. Southeastern is licensed for 337 beds and also operates a 115-bed long-term care center. For more information about Southeastern Regional Medical Center, visit www.srmc.org.

About Allscripts
Allscripts uses innovation technology to bring health to healthcare. More than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals and nearly 8,000 post-acute and homecare organizations utilize Allscripts to improve the health of their patients and their bottom line. To learn more, visit www.allscripts.com.

Source: Allscripts

You can discuss about Allscripts and its products & services in the Allscripts Company User Group