(SPONSORED) Sheila Nielsen, Director of the Project Management Office in IT at MaineGeneral Health, and LeAnn Kaufman, Revenue Cycle Administrative Director for the Revenue Cycle Administrative Office at MaineGeneral Health, discuss the “one application, one technology” approach to replacing its multiple revenue cycle systems. MaineGeneral Health is a comprehensive non-profit system with the mission of enhancing, every day, the health of the people of the greater Kennebec Valley. Kaufman, who has 24 years of experience at MaineGeneral, served as the project lead, and Nielsen served as the project manager for the Soarian Enterprise Revenue Cycle implementation.

Q: What were your guiding principles or goals when selecting a revenue cycle solution?

A: MaineGeneral had been looking for ways to improve our processes and to transform our revenue cycle. We needed to simplify and streamline several legacy revenue cycle applications into a more comprehensive solution in order to move toward a true enterprise solution for our revenue cycle. We needed the right solution to get us to our goals.

Our selection process was based on four guiding principles:

1. Strive for simplification.

2. Focus on the patient. Keep the patient at the center of all our decisions and ensure a positive patient experience.

3. Focus on standardization across the enterprise and implement best practices.

4. Meet all of our strategic and operational goals.

In the end, the robust Soarian Enterprise Revenue Cycle Management solution addressed our four guiding principles. In July 2013, MaineGeneral went live on Soarian® Enterprise Revenue Cycle Management which allowed us to consolidate our revenue cycle for the organization and achieve the standardization we were driving towards. It is the solution we had been looking for.

Q: Why did you bring Soarian Enterprise Revenue Cycle Management live in your physician practices at the same time as your acute-care facilities?

A: Many organizations have the luxury of deciding on a phased or big bang implementation approach. For MaineGeneral, there really wasn’t a decision point. Coming from two legacy systems that didn’t talk well or interface at all, we knew moving to one enterprise solution was imperative to reach our goals. We needed collaboration across the enterprise with consistent processes for both the physician practice and acute-care staff s in order to positively affect the patient experience.

For example, whether a patient checks in at the physician practice or one of our ancillary or diagnostic centers, the patient should have the same experience. From the patient’s perspective, we are MaineGeneral. Consistency was very important to us. The Soarian Enterprise Revenue Cycle Management implementation methodology gave us one consistent patient-access experience simultaneously at our acute-care facilities and physician practices supporting the entire organization’s revenue cycle needs. We now have the tools to proactively manage the patients’ encounter wherever they enter our system.