An Epic migration

8 minute read

A midsized healthcare system that specializes in stroke and chest pain conducted a broad revenue cycle review to uncover where efficiencies could be realized. It became apparent that they needed to upgrade both their patient accounting system and their payment systems.

The staff was dissatisfied with the equipment provided by their prior payment solutions partner. They consistently experienced device issues and downtimes. This resulted in decreased patient satisfaction during the payment process, which negatively reflected on the organization. These problems also resulted in staff frustration. The decision was made to make significant improvements.

Migrate to Epic’s EHR (Electronic Health Record) and engage a new payment solutions equipment provider.

The organization’s leadership and treasury teams knew they needed an experienced partner to guide them through the journey. As a long-standing client of Bank of America, the leadership turned to their Bank of America relationship team for help.

Given the decision to move to Epic, Bank of America knew that patient experience, engagement and staff efficiencies were top priorities. The organization wanted to offer patients a more robust and comprehensive way to engage, embracing the “digital front door,” a concept that encapsulates healthcare’s migration to more convenient channels for payments. This meant simple changes such as patients being able to see upcoming appointments within their patient portal, as well as broader capabilities, including the ability for them to set up flexible payment plans and opt in for text-to-pay — making it as easy as possible for patients while improving collections.

From a staff perspective, the ability to move to a Single Billing Office (SBO) model meant a consistent billing experience between the hospital and physician practice, which was critical. Epic’s native functionality was also a huge improvement, as was helping to eliminate manual reconciliation efforts by utilizing the Epic Cash Management module. BofA helped support these priorities by understanding the different bank resources and solutions that would help drive the client’s investment.

BofA needed to rethink everything the health system had in place to ensure it would be compatible with Epic. First was to meet with team members shortly aſter their decision to embrace Epic and help with a critical step — narrowing down the partners they needed to select and provide these to Epic as soon as possible. Walking through the entire payment experience and collections process was very helpful for the client. BofA knew Healthcare Payment Solutions (HPS) would be a great fit, given that HPS integrates with Epic’s MyChart, provides real-time posting, and gives patients options based on how they want to pay (including ApplePay® and Google Pay™).

For reconciliation and streamlining of work for paper and EFT collections, our HealthLogic offered a way to auto-post to Epic, which would reduce manual intervention, categorize correspondence so urgent items can be worked quickly, and provide our Epic Cash Management file back to them for reconciliation. After spending months solutioning and mapping out the desired end state, BofA had addressed every step within the revenue cycle process. Offering this level of detail and advisory support was critical to ensuring that the client was set up for success before, during and aſter the Epic go-live.

The implementation resulted in a health system with a unified payment solution, able to manage payments and payment devices from a single dashboard. New lockboxes were implemented, physician services onboarded and new MIDs created. Additionally, in an upgrade from its previous experience, users can directly contact the Bank of America team and support staff for assistance with any issues. The integration also means that the client’s treasury team doesn’t have to wait for end-of-day file posting or settlement. It can all be done in real time. This not only improves patient engagement but does so in a cost-effective way. Going forward, they will hopefully see an uptick in patient collections, driven by the convenience of MyChart.

What does this do for the health system in the future? It enables them to take advantage of the ongoing evolution of Epic, which continues to improve patient engagement, analytics, messaging and payment preferences. In fact, the client has recently expanded by acquiring another hospital, and having a relationship and connectivity already in place is helping the transition run smoothly.

HPS makes it very easy to seamlessly add devices, add locations and acquire different health systems. It can make restarts, updates and patches remotely. Many other systems require these to be done manually, but HPS cuts down on time-consuming work. For a single site, this may not be too much of a problem, but for organizations thinking of expanding, it can be a substantial benefit.

Don’t be afraid of change. With technology evolving all the time, finding the best solution can ultimately save time and resources. Other key considerations are your choice of partner and taking an active part in decision-making. Make sure you’re in a partnership and not just a one-way vendor relationship. BofA and the health system conducted weekly calls throughout this initiative, which kept everyone on track. It’s important to find an organization that listens and will work with you to fix any issues.

Ultimately, the implementation was driven by patient needs, and that shaped every part of the solution. It provided the organization with a more efficient, cost-effective system, preparing it for future growth down the road.

If you have any questions or want to discuss anything further, please contact your Bank of America relationship manager.