News

Carrus Hospitals Improve Operations, Medical Billing with EHR

By Ryan Mcaskill

- The healthcare landscape is evolving quickly and payers and providers are relying on the latest technology to keep pace, while giving patients high-quality, affordable care.

Jon Rains, the CEO of Carrus Hospitals, spoke with RevCycleIntelligence.com about his company’s adoption of MEDHOST’s comprehensive, integrated clinical and financial solutions and its hosted HIPAA-compliant IT environment.

Carrus Hospitals, in Sherman, Texas, is comprised of a 16-bed long-term acute care specialty hospital and 24-bed rehabilitation hospital. Opened in 2010, Rains has been the CEO since 2013 and has been an integral part of the Hospitals recent turnaround. Prior to taking over, Carrus was running at an average occupancy of 25 to 30 percent. In 2014, that number is up to 100 percent, with a wait list of patients from a 350 mile radius.

One of the big reasons for this resurgence was adopting electronic medical records. According to Rains, having the “latest and greatest technology” is needed to take care of patients and meet modern healthcare challenges. Making this transition from paper to digital was not easy. Rains vetted various systems for five months before finally deciding MEDHOST was the right choice.

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  • “I liked the MEDHOST functionality,” Rains explained. “I liked how the systems talked to each other. Their financial platform is amazing. And, from a patient care standpoint, it offers the easiest training, the most onsite training, the most interactive training. Their new physician module is excellent. I feel it exceeds all industry standards.”

    While searching for the right system, several factors were high priorities. Rains explained that ease of training was critical. He also needed a solution that would communicate with multiple systems on a two way street, not just send out information blasts.

    “Often times going paperless won’t work because nursing has one platform, physicians have one platform, and they don’t mirror,” Rains said. This leads to one or more groups having incomplete data.

    Rains also spoke about the MEDHOST’s hosting ability, calling it “paramount” to the decision making process. By creating hosted customized reports, Rains and his team are able to spend more time focusing on the end product and patients, instead of maintaining clinical and system uptime and costs on the servers. That time and resources is now focused on the bedside. It also eliminates the need for a “very expensive” server room that needs to be maintained.

    So far, the system has experienced an easy implementation and a majority of the staff participates in ongoing training. Rains and his team have the ability to mold the system as they like it and MEDHOST is an active partner, supporting Carrus while allowing it to make the system their own.

    One of the most immediate benefits has been on the financial side. Electronic health records are helping capture every charge and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

    “It solves your lost charge problems and helps make sure you have the right equipment at the bedside for the patient,” Rains said. “Right now its a real struggle because we can have thousands of dollars in lost charges and their really is no way to capture that because when it is all paper it’s too hard from an accounting perspective to make sure everything is as they say it is.”