Client Overview

Massachusetts General Hospital is the third oldest general hospital in the United States and the oldest and largest hospital in New England. It offers world class patient care, and is the original and largest teaching hospital in the Harvard Medical School. It is also a founding member of Partner's Healthcare.   MGH uses a variety of HIS systems inlcuding Misys and Sunquest Laboratory systems.

Problem

 The MGH Microbiology service was not charging for microorganism isolate workups.  The Microbiology culture is billed at accession, but it is not known at the time of accession if there will be isolates found.  If an organism is definitively identified in the workup, a charge for the organism workup could be captured through the billing tab of the current Microbiology Laboratory Application.  It was difficult and time consuming to perform this extra step to charge for each microorganism work up, and therefore, this step had not been utilized in the past

Solution Overview

The MGH Pathology Service Systems Team contacted Arcanum Solutions for a quick and inexpensive solution to their problem. Arcanum Solutions chose to solve the MGH revenue challenge by using a tool called Boston Workstation. This tool allowed us to develop a script that would mimic written instructions for an end user and in this case, simulates the manual billing process for microorganisms that are identified.

Results

The scripting process provides greater accuracy in capturing qualified Microorganisms with a decreased margin of error than the manual billing required on the system by a technologist.  In addition, the script is set up to run in real time or a batch basis unattended each day. The end result is that the Microbiology Department captured an additional $1.8 million in revenue in a 10 month period and is expected to realize 2.2 million in new revenue per year!  Using Boston Workstation, and Arcanum Solutions, Partners Healthcare was able to develop a script that not only increased the department’s monthly review, but is fully automated and does not require additional resources from within the department.