Feedback on the Return on Investment (ROI)...
"We implemented Harvest last July, and have since downsized an accession tech that worked 24 hours/week. Our volume in that time has actually increased. Now instead of 2 med techs, an accession tech, and supervisor here during the day, it is just 2 med techs and supervisor; I handle the majority of sample influx in the morning busy time (8-11am) and the other 2 techs handle it the rest of the day, while I move on to my other duties. This is working fairly well so far. The accessioning workload has been cut by about 80%. We do have the majority of our lab work ordered on Webstation by the providers and their assistants and our ancillary department, where lab draws and radiology services are.
Our med techs are significantly freed up in their bench jobs due to the efficiency of the Orchard Harvest system, so they have more time to handle accessioning during the afternoons. We are a 9 physician Internal Medicine practice and have many specialty surgery offices in our corporation that send us lab work on pre-op patients, PSA's etc. We have plans to increase our lab business in the near future and do not anticipate adding any more laboratory staff now that we have Orchard on our team."
Doreen Wilson; Healthcare Midwest; Kalamazoo, MI
"My lab services a 60 physician group and has had Orchard for about 6 years. I wasn't around when they purchased it, so I can't tell you about the initial impact that it had on staffing. I can tell you, however, what I have found most impressive about Orchard and how it has added value to my position as the lab manager. I have worked with 3 different lab systems over the course of my 30 year career. Orchard is far and away the most versatile system of them all. I am frequently asked by administration to provide statistical information and data assessment for all kinds of strategic plans. I am also asked, by individual physicians, to assess trends in test results and to compare their patient results to the company overall. I also use the browser functions in Orchard to assess and troubleshoot instrument performance.
Whatever the issue is, I am always able to provide the information needed in a matter of minutes. From any of the previous systems I worked with, this kind of information would take days or sometimes weeks to get and quite often required some kind of additional payment as well.
To me, personally, it is ‘priceless.’"
Prudence Cass; Hawthorn Medical Associates; North Dartmouth, MA
"Here are few things that have been a great push as we are out selling the Nextgen/Orchard combo in our area to the new practices we are bringing on:
1. Turn around time is much lower with the LIS than on paper - we went from 5 days on paper to less than 24 hours via the LIS (and of course the EMR helps with this time frame.)
2. Reference lab paper work/data entry required a 40 hour/week job which was deleted when we obtained Orchard with the Ref lab interfaces.
3. Quality control is a 1-3 hour a week review for me for FOUR offices at my desk now, rather than a visit to each site once every two weeks to review and sign off QC—this has saved me at least 5-8 hours per week alone.
4. Ability to send the correct (and much needed) CPT coding per Insurance contract to our billing department so that they can send claims faster has increased our payment turn around time from 45 days in AR to around 28 days in AR.
5. QA reports that we pull for our Clinicians to show them their mean values for THIER patients vs Practice mean for how their patients are responding to treatment for Diabetes, Hyperlipidemia are worth their weight in GOLD.
6. The Reimbursement report has been a great Education tool to the Clinicians for their coding mistakes, learning what to use, and we are now recovering more revenue because of increased understanding of what they need to give us for what test.
7. Just getting rid of paper within the Lab has saved money; we went from 25 cases per month to five.
8. The time saving factor of dropping reports on to printers vs faxing or couriering reports for patients being seen ‘Right then.’”
Lynda Carroll; Family Care Partners; Jacksonville, FL
"As a small POL at the time (1997), I was able to reduce my FTE's from 5.5 to 4.5, that being a MLT position. This is the only concrete data I can provide. Good luck convincing admin of the efficiencies of a LIS. I like to compare it to the work administration would have to do without their PCs and associated software. Remember manual spreadsheets?”
Jeff Schepper; Indiana Internal Medicine; Indianapolis, IN
"Our return on investment has been measured by the size of our test menu—we've added 7 new tests and taken over patient registration without adding personnel. Also, our Microbiology billing is 100% accurate. Previously, the steps the tech took on day one weren't always logged in a way that the tech turning out the culture and charges on day two could capture.”
Heidi Kinney; Greenville Medical Center; Greenville, PA
"I haven't done a return on investment study, but I can tell you this...we are a small, but very busy Physician's Office Lab servicing nine providers. Last year at this time we had one full time lab assistant, one full time tech, and me—a working manager. We now have me and my tech does per diem work (she went back to school full time in Jan), and no lab assistant. I am fairly busy, but it is manageable for now. NO WAY could we have been able to do this without Harvest!! We love it, and the physicians couldn't be happier.”
Chris Gallinger; Associates for Women’s Medicine; Syracuse, NY
"In 2002 - we had a computer crash and had to go to paper.It took us 64 hours (8 full time people) to manually write up 358 reports with 5370 results and fax them to the offices. Harvest does this automatically. Orchard's Harvest has been a great employee. It works 12 hours a day with has only 2.5 days off since 2/3/97. How many employees can you say that about?
Currently we perform testing for 75 providers (CLIA workload is 730,000/year) - We do that with 4 full time employees and me. The last three COLA inspections we have received the COLA EXCELLENCE AWARD. None of this could be done without Harvest. I thank Abbott everyday that they brought Orchard into my laboratory.”
Regina Sebeck; Esse Health; St. Louis, MO
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