A Vitalware Case Study: Valley Presbyterian Hospital

Valley Presbyterian Hospital opened its doors to the community in 1958 as a small, neighborhood provider of personalized medical care. Today, they’re one of the largest and most prestigious full-service acute-care facilities in the San Fernando Valley. Their 350-bed hospital serves thousands of families each year, offering a wide range of topflight medical expertise and leading-edge technology across all elements of care. Their nurses, therapists, technicians, and more than 500 physicians consistently rank among the best, and they represent virtually every specialty and most sub-specialties in the medical field — including cardiac care, orthopedics, maternal and child health, and oncology.

While their range of acute-care services and expertise has continued to expand, they proudly remain a community-based hospital at heart. As one of the Valley’s only independent, non-profit, and locally governed institutions, they provide an exceptional level of care that responds to the needs of their community. No surprise then, that they’ve been voted “Best Hospital” by the readers of Los Angeles Daily News for 13 years in a row. Also, no surprise: their desire to continue improving.

Valley Presbyterian Steps Up to a New Standard for CDM

Not fully satisfied with their current CDM solution, Valley Presbyterian Hospital set out to find a CDM tool that integrated better with their day-to-day operation and data needs. When they assessed their current CDM environment, they found that their various CDM solutions were causing them to work too hard to find the information they needed and be assured it was accurate. The first cost they were absorbing was the time they took to assure they were working with the right information; the second: too much rework when the information wasn’t spot on the first time through. They knew that any confusion within a CDM solution could lead to potential compliance issues — in addition to the loss of revenue and time — so Valley Presbyterian Hospital prioritized finding a single CDM tool that could consume all their data and integrate seamlessly across the hospital’s many departments.

Searching for the Right Answer

After taking meetings with a few CDM vendors and comparing the capabilities of each, Valley Presbyterian Hospital landed on VitalCDM, a Vitalware® by Health Catalyst® solution, after they heard three magic words: Live Client Support.

With VitalCDM’s easy to use interface, and the ability to customize workflows for a built-for-you CDM tool, they quickly had the ability to compare pricing at several different hospitals at one time. That leap forward meant that Valley Presbyterian Hospital was set up to work at a much more efficient and accurate rate.

VitalCDM Offers “Ease of Information”

With VitalCDM, Valley Presbyterian Hospital benefited from having important information right at their fingertips, allowing them to easily identify discrepancies in descriptions and charges from disparate files, store all of their requests in one place, and pull reports in context and whenever needed. “I really like Vitalware for the ease of use. I can find what I need, and if I can’t, I can contact Michelle (Valley Presbyterian Hospital’s personal rep) and she can help me in a minute,” said Rita Sullivan, Revenue Integrity Manager at Valley Presbyterian Hospital. In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, Sullivan fields calls from other departments with requests to pull pricing and payment data. VitalCDM has made it much easier for her to quickly respond, and, even better, to provide her colleagues with access to the platform to check it out themselves.

Personal Support, “Right Out of the Gate”

“I could feel the support from Vitalware right out the gate, and it has never ever let me down,” continued Sullivan. Calling a dedicated person with questions or help was the biggest draw for Sullivan and her team in their search for a new CDM solution, and Vitalware delivered on that promise. In her role, Sullivan can’t afford downtime: putting a ticket in for support and waiting for assistance via email was just not cutting it. Too slow, and too much follow-up in an environment where multi-tasking is already a day-to-day reality. Thankfully, now, with a personal support team, questions are answered much quicker, and Sullivan has confidence that she’ll get help whenever she needs it.

Another key part of Vitalware’s support offering is building out the solution for you, a key advantage that Sullivan found was definitely not ubiquitous across solutions. Previous providers, she’d worked with required her to build out the CDM tool. The all-too-predictable problem? This made things much more difficult for the vendor when asked to provide support or address an error that needed fixing.

Better Data Drives Better Billing and Compliance

It isn’t uncommon for revenue departments to bill a code that’s no longer active, but Sullivan notes: “I really like the preventative piece [of VitalCDM] when you load the new codes for the coming year. I can quickly pull it so that I don’t get stuck in a situation where I am trying to pull a code that is extinct.”

Another challenge many hospitals face is departmental errors in scheduling, even simple distinctions like in-patient vs out-patient procedures. VitalCDM makes it simple to determine precisely what and how a procedure should be scheduled, and easily catch errors when something is amiss.

Big Savings

When errors cause patients to be billed incorrectly, the hospital usually has to assume the whole bill, making it a very costly mistake. Sullivan estimates that using VitalCDM across departments could save hundreds of thousands of dollars. “By using the tool and showing my colleagues at the hospital how to use the tool, it could prevent that type of loss.” Of course, money isn’t the only asset being wasted. If your chargemaster is out of date and you bill incorrectly, you can get caught up in the billing modules, which requires the hospital to go back through to pull the charge, audit it and then fix it – a big time waster.

Being Picky Pays Off…

“I’m pretty picky. The people who know me would agree, and I really haven’t found faults.” Sullivan explains that having a CDM solution that is easy to use – and easy to use across departments – makes a huge difference in overall efficiency. While Valley Presbyterian Hospital has already seen improvements in cutting down mistakes, Sullivan’s mission is to help all departments better utilize the solution, to bring even more value to the entire hospital.