Page 28 - Company Newsletters

ABT NEWS
QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER January2015
Architecting document control systems for healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies
Provider Oversight: Have You Seen It?
BACKGROUND
Healthcare Providers who outsource their Release of Informa7on (ROI) request fulfillments to a service bureau are faced with unique issues. One par7cularly significant issue these Providers have shared with us is their lack of control over and interac7on with the outsourced ROI fulfillment process. While they do not wish to perform fulfillments themselves, they feel as if meaningful oversight of the process has been “kidnapped” from them by their service bureau. These Providers find themselves using Passive Oversight. To learn what this means for the Provider, let’s take a closer look at the two basic types of oversight: Passive and Dynamic.
PASSIVE OVERSIGHT
With Passive Oversight, Providers have a passive (inac7ve) role in the ROI process. They must either ask for request status and ac7vity reports from the service bureau or wait for periodic reports, which use the service bureau’s preferred format and the data it chooses to share. Thus, Providers’ ability to monitor service bureau performance is limited and occurs well aKer the fact. In addi7on, many Providers have expressed their frustra7on to us that, upon receiving a phone call from a Requestor to check the status of a “request in process,” they must then ask their service bureau to find and communicate the status for them. Passive Oversight is standard within the ROI service industry currently.
DYNAMIC OVERSIGHT
With Dynamic Oversight, Providers have a dynamic (ac7ve) role in the ROI process. They are able to view request status and ac7vi7es in real-7me via the service bureau’s online ROI fulfillment plaNorm and create their own reports in any format, at any 7me. In fact, Providers can control the very plaNorm being used by the service bureau, including online user access rights and privileges, request fulfillment data, and status reports. The Provider is simply outsourcing its fulfillment ac7vity to a third party, whose performance can be monitored easily in real-7me.
CONCLUSION
When Providers outsource ROI processing, they are transferring a responsibility that once belonged to their employees. Ideally, therefore, the service bureau should meet the same performance standards as a full-7me employee and be monitored accordingly. If a Provider spots a possible breach, it should be able to protect itself by restric7ng a service bureau worker’s access or holding a request un7l it can consult service bureau management. The right to hire and fire a service bureau should rest with the Provider, based upon accurate, 7mely performance data. Given that Providers are held accountable under Meaningful Use standards, why shouldn’t Providers use “Meaningful Oversight” standards to hold vendors accountable within the ROI service arena?
From ABT to You
ABT Medical’s new Facebook site brings you ABT and healthcare- related news and trends, in addition to success stories featuring our Provider-clients. Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/abtmedinc.
Our “Today’s ROI News” and ABT Quarterly Newsletter publications are designed to inform our existing and prospective clients about key issues such as:
• The true cost of outsourcing
• The risks of faxing or mailing PHI
• Pitfalls of revenue sharing
• Continuing care—the orphan
child
• Ever-compressing ROI fees
• The outsource vendor’s real client
Did you know?
In the last 12 months, ABT Medical has enabled many new companies to enter the Release of Information market space with little or no up- front capital funding by using the ROI+ platform.
Ninety-five percent of all patient medical records are viewed by the Requestor community via the ABT Requestor Portal, giving us the highest online viewing percentage in the healthcare industry.
Angela Ford
Senior VP Corp. Communications
Angela Ford
aford@abtmedinc.com
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