BCA leaves the tech expertise to HMS; frees up valuable time

As executive vice president and CFO of Behavioral Centers of America, LLC, Michael Davis wants the most sophisticated technology for his behavioral organization, without getting bogged down in the technical details.With HMS as a partner, Davis and other BCA executives can focus on running their network of psychiatric hospitals and clinics while leaving the technological expertise to someone else.

Michael Davis
Executive Vice President & CFO
BCA (Behavioral Centers of America, LLC.)
Nashville, TN
Multi-Facility Corporation

Adopting the HMS system and its application service provider (ASP) platform has helped BCA evolve from a start-up with fragmented IT to a respected competitor with a solid infrastructure and the latest software capabilities.

"As we start selling our story in order to grow, we're going to be in a much better position than other companies entering this market that haven't taken the time to develop this infrastructure," Davis says.

For its first three years, the company operated manually, outsourcing its payroll and using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to track accounts receivable, which functioned on two systems that had to be reconciled regularly. Subsidiary systems were posted manually to the general ledger, making it impossible to obtain detailed account information.Reporting and controlling finances at each facility, as well as consolidation reporting, was time-consuming and complicated. Facilities used index cards to admit patients, and with no common mechanism for tracking patient history and accessing it during readmission, multiple medical records for the same patient were common.

"There is always the possibility of duplication when you don't have checks and balances and don't know a patient's history," Davis says.

Needs for growth

With no shared information system, the company's infrastructure was problematic. Staff used non-standard PCs prone to viruses, spam and pop-ups and multiple e-mail systems with no corporate address book. Data wasn't backed up in a consistent or secure manner.

"What we had wasn't conducive to our organization or long-term growth strategy," Davis says. "We had no electronic statistical gathering system or medical records or admitting function that was fully integrated.

"We knew that our current IT structure wasn't going to be able to support the growth model we had in mind, so we started looking at alternatives."

Advantages of HMS

BCA executives were familiar with HMS and liked that it offered solutions catered to the behavioral environment.

"Few IT systems on the front end are developed specifically for psychiatric treatment," Davis says.

Most of all, executives wanted a user-friendly system with a reliable infrastructure, a need that HMS was able to meet with its IBM System i platform.

"It is easily expandable and doesn't require a high degree of expertise by highly skilled professionals to run queries," Davis says.

By going the ASP route, executives didn't have to open a data center. HMS manages servers in one location, handling software standardization, data recovery and the costs of IT staff training, technology use and equipment maintenance. In addition, HMS provides the company with e-mail and office programs, such as Microsoft Word and Excel.

"It was much more cost-effective to do it this way," Davis says. "And the preservation of capital was important to support our hospital acquisition strategy."

Davis likes knowing he can come into his office in the mornings to find data backed up.

"Backups are automated, so that means I can make sure they get done," Davis says. "I don't have to go through backup tapes, hoping they were built."

HMS also provides BCA with a seamless interface for billing, which it outsources, and ensures that BCA staff has updated software.

"HMS pushes all of the applications down to the desktop so everyone is operating under the same version every time," Davis says.

Having the flexibility to rapidly deploy the system to new hospitals the company acquires makes conversions as painless as possible.

"When we roll the technology out, we already have the sequence down," Davis says. "We're not starting from a blank slate, there is consistency between hospitals."

The system also integrates well with the behavioral environment, automatically converting ICD-9-CM diagnoses to DSM-IV. When a procedure doesn't match a diagnosis, it alerts medical coders.

"There's a higher degree of accuracy in our medical record coding because the system speaks the same language as a behavioral facility," Davis says. "This ensures that reimbursements are accurate."

Clinicians don't spend as much time helping office staff track lost charges, and enabling technologies, such as mobile laptops, allow them to access files anytime.

"It frees them up to spend more time doing therapy versus administering it," Davis says.

The technology also saves time for Davis. He no longer lugs files with him when traveling, and he can finish work from home or a hotel. When doing reports, he doesn't need to go through boxes of binders to trace information.

"It's chopped 12 days out of our close,which amounts to a month of management," Davis says. "It gives me more time to spend making decisions instead of being a bean counter."

With solutions that provide disaster recovery, optical imaging and other cutting-edge functionalities, HMS has helped move BCA into a larger playing field.

"I'm confident that our IT system is as good or better than what most of the bigger behavioral companies have," Davis says.