Net Health® Therapy for Hospital Outpatient Achieves $250,000 ROI for Avera Health

When Avera Health, a large regional outpatient clinic group, invested in Net Health’s ReDoc® classic therapy management system in 2015, Phil Moe, Therapy Outpatient Manager for Avera Health, was confident it would produce the efficiencies he needed. What he didn’t know was that over the next six years, ReDoc and the next-generation EHR solution Net Health® Therapy for Hospital Outpatient, would bring Avera across-the-board improvements that far exceeded expectations.

Initially, Moe sought a system that would provide continuity and streamline operations across Avera’s large, South Dakota-based clinic network. He was frustrated that the data from his facilities was inconsistent, preventing historical analysis and short-circuiting efforts to build any business case for change.

There also were issues with billing. Out of an abundance of caution, he applied Medicare rules to every patient, regardless of their insurance, missing opportunities to bill payers for all services rendered.

Net Health’s fully integrated EHR solution solved these problems and more. It enabled Avera to tailor bills to each payer, providing the billing optimization Moe was after. The system brought other efficiencies as well, including the ability to document services at the point of care, rather than between sessions.

And while Net Health suggested upfront that Avera Health would gain one unit of billing per therapist per day, they achieved that and more. In fact, after just one year with ReDoc, 

Avera’s ROI was $250,000.

Designed by therapists for therapists 

From the beginning, Moe was impressed by Net Health’s emphasis on the clinician’s experience with the software. So, he was delighted that Therapy for Hospital Outpatient takes this even further. While ReDoc classic is oriented around the primary therapist, Therapy for Hospital focuses on the visit and treatment cycles—putting the patient’s outcomes front and center with its intuitive and customizable workflows.

Moe notes that when he got his first glimpse of the new platform, he thought, ‘Oh, this is what I was looking for.’  He explains that the software helps Avera therapists make all the right decisions for their patients while maintaining their own work-life balance.

Lightning-fast migration

For Avera, Net Health’s dedication to client experience shone particularly bright in its migration from ReDoc classic to Therapy for Hospital Outpatient. The two companies worked in tandem to design a transition plan that worked well for all.

Moe recalls that transitioning to ReDoc classic took three months; the first clinics on the system went live in February, and subsequent groups were added each week until April.

When Avera first migrated to Net Health Therapy for Hospital Outpatient, 400 users across 38 facilities went home on a Friday night and came back the following Monday to a brand-new system.

With the migration came a host of new features Avera now enjoys, including:

• The ability for clinicians to create their own core workflows, including for different specialty areas
• A deep, native FOTO integration with single sign-on, streamlining access for practitioners
• Expanded management reporting with a dynamic business intelligence dashboard that lets users assess productivity at a glance
• Enhanced compliance functionality, including guidelines and built-in assistance
• Seamless deployment and upgrades, thanks to a cloud-based architecture

After implementing Net Health Therapy for Hospital Outpatient, Avera experienced a reduction in denials and accelerated payment of claims from all payers. Bottom line: After one year on the new platform, it achieved an incremental ROI of $140,000.

“To put it simply, we generated more revenue with the same staff, thanks to Net Health,” summarizes Moe. “We make informed decisions, understanding why certain things are happening and if we should be doing anything differently.”

Rehab therapists are looking for EHR solutions that can be rapidly deployed, are easy to use and provide exceptional ROI.