Creating a platform for superior customer service

With nine different pharmacy locations (four focused on DME) and a billing department in a separate downtown building, Franciscan Pharmacy & Home Medical Supply spent a significant amount of time on the phone and faxing documents between offices. Even within the individual locations, employees were frequently leaving their desks to manually transfer orders to the warehouse for completion.

Processing a standard patient order from intake to completion required a tremendous amount of back and forth effort from the Store to Benefits & Eligibility, back to the Store, then to the Warehouse, and finally back to the Store and on to Billing.   And depending upon the type of order, it was typical for the related processes to become even more complex.  For example, compression garments require a prescription from a LANA-certified therapist in order for state plans to cover the costs. Those therapists work within the hospital rehab center, and patients often needed to wait while the paperwork shuttled between locations.  When patients called to check on an order status, the Franciscan staff would take notes and promise to call the patient back with the requested information. Despite the staff’s best efforts, without a central tracking system, a single call could easily turn into two calls or three or four to get all of the needed information gathered and relayed back to the patient.

Although Franciscan had instituted Medforce’s paperless filing system for organizing, storing and sharing documents, the related work processes remained highly manual and fraught with risk. The filing system was only as good as the documents that were indexed into it. If an employee missed a step or overlooked getting a piece of paperwork completed, it could go unnoticed. Missing claims and documentation meant delays or an inability to collect money the company had earned. When claims were sent to billing for processing, there was no easy way for the pharmacy to confirm whether the documentation arrived complete. The organization’s processes were complex, required a lot of manual attention, and were sometimes performed inconsistently. And, in the end, they were hindering the staff’s ability to provide patients with the efficient and timely service that fueled the Franciscan mission.