Lahey Clinic Medical Center is a large multi-specialty ambulatory care and 268-bed hospital that serves more than 3,000 patients each day. Long a leader in clinical innovation, Lahey wanted to be viewed the same way for technology innovation. This is what prompted the organization, in 2001, to seek a technology solution for what it felt was a cumbersome coding process. Ultimately Lahey selected mobile charge capture from MedAptus due to its depth and breadth of coding and compliance rules and logic.

To support MedAptus, and other systems down the line, Lahey decided to implement an enterprise-wide wireless system. The organization believed that by providing physicians with the ability to wirelessly transmit accurate charge data from patient examination areas to its billing support teams, a multitude of paper forms, and the related document controls, would be eliminated. Additionally, by billing for patient visits on the same day, payment lags would be greatly reduced.

While currently utilizing real-time data feeds from its separate professional scheduling and hospital systems to MedAptus, Lahey initially rolled-out charge capture to a pilot group of users in late 2001 within its main Burlington location, for usage with office visits only. To quantify initial system impact, Lahey conducted a three-month study comparing the performance of its pilot group of 15 users, across four departments, in various areas including recovery of lost charges and lapse from patient visit to charge entry.

What Lahey found was that it had lost no lost charges during the pilot, as well as reduced time-to-charge entry to less than one day. These findings led Lahey to initiate a system-wide outpatient roll-out, on a group-by-group basis. Lahey has since further expanded the MedAptus implementation to include the capture of inpatient charges.

Currently Lahey has about 450 MedAptus users, and estimates it has saved over $1 million annually due to daily charge reconciliation. As a result of such financial improvements, Lahey is able to invest in new technologies to support continued clinical excellence. As one example, Lahey is currently implementing electronic prescribing, integrated with MedAptus, in order to advance its objectives of increasing patient safety and enhancing clinician accuracy within the daily business workflow.

Read a case study on the MedAptus implementation at Lahey Clinic Mobile Health Data Features Lahey Clinic ADVANCE for Health Information Professionals Highlights Coding at Lahey Clinic