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For the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative (RWHC), the number of documents on file for a practitioner can range from 10 to 50. And with a growing number of more than 30,000 practitioners within the system, staff grew overwhelmed maintaining and continuously updating practitioner records.
As a healthcare cooperative for 39 rural hospitals throughout Wisconsin, RWHC provides its members with a variety of resources to streamline internal processes. Developing new, innovative ways to attract and maintain its members keeps the co-op competitive with larger organizations.
Implementing OnBase by Hyland was the strategic technology investment needed to make RWHC stand out from the competition.
Working with Naviant, an authorized OnBase solution provider, RWHC uses OnBase to manage all practitioner documents and updates. All the documents are available to member hospitals through an online portal, providing each with realtime access to personnel files for its doctors, nurses and therapists.
Streamlines credential verification updates
Before implementing OnBase, verifying various updates for files was manually intensive. Staff members queried licensing and state boards to confirm each update, and then printed or emailed them to member hospitals.
Now, with the state providing this information online, staff electronically print it into OnBase, eliminating the need to physically print updates and scan them into OnBase. Each week, OnBase sweeps the system for any credential updates and sends an email notification to each hospital explaining what was updated for each provider.
“The turnaround time – the delivery to our clients – is really important” said Darrell Statz, OnBase administrator and director of finance and support services at RWHC. “We can turn a file around more efficiently and accurately using OnBase.”
Simplifies support for audits
It’s critical for RWHC’s clients to quickly produce provider files for Joint Commission inspections. If a surveyor shows up and randomly selects 10 practitioners to review, the hospital must produce up-to-date credentials.
“Instead of shuffling through all of that paper to find something, our members just log on to our website and bam! They have the license for that individual as well as the date and time it was updated,” said Bonnie Laffey, director of programs and services at RWHC.
Provides the organization with a competitive advantage
OnBase provides the efficiency RWHC needs to grow its operations, offering healthcare systems with services typically expected of larger, more expensive credential verification organizations.
“OnBase will help us grow,” Statz said. “If we were still shipping paper files, we wouldn’t be an attractive offer. Although there are larger companies that do what we do, we’re more effective and affordable. OnBase allows us to deliver a service that exceeds what our competitors are able to deliver.”
Reduces paper costs: By no longer printing, filing and mailing paper documents, RWHC saves money, allowing the co-op to reallocate budget for other initiatives.
Member hospitals save money, too.
“It’s not just about reducing our internal costs,” Statz said. “It’s about delivering a different product to our end client, which allows them to save costs internally as well. OnBase really has evolved into a benefit to both us and the clients.”
Ensures disaster recovery: “Before OnBase, we had a room full of files and no way of purging them or a way to recreate them if something happened to the building,” Statz said. “With information in OnBase, it truly is our form of disaster recovery.”
Provides instant information access: “Our member hospitals have 24/7 access to their providers’ information,” Statz said. “It saves us a lot of phone calls and gives them direct access to any of the documents they need.”
