Case Study:  NextStep at Rose Hill Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation

Overview

The Rose Hill Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation in Holly, Michigan is a rehabilitation facility for those diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, clinical depression, bi-polar disorder or other major mental illness. The 51 clinical staff members at Rose Hill provide care to 76 people, an annual case load of approximately 150, through their Rehabilitation, Extended Care, Transitional Living, and Community Support programs. These consumers are referred by 6 different payers from all over the country. Rose Hill engages in treatment and research for advancing the rehabilitation of mentally ill adults.

Challenge

Like many providers of secondary healthcare services, the documentation required while planning treatment, providing care, and billing is extremely time consuming and inefficient.  Information is written down and copied from sheet to sheet to comply with demanding requirements of accrediting organizations, HIPAA, and payers while running a first-class quality program.  Add the need to provide evidence-based care for better consumer outcomes and lower care costs and one can begin to understand the challenge in juggling data, shuffling paper, and trying to compile useful information.  A long-term user of electronic records software, Rose Hill found that just having “software” was not achieving their objectives; instead, it was just another way, an expensive way, to keep forms.  Further, their software vendor continually increased their prices and provided poor service.

The organization needed an affordable solution that could do more than just maintain records.  It was essential that, instead of paying high costs for software that contained screens for entering data, Rose Hill invested in a system that offered significant clinical returns, while saving money in the long run.  In order to achieve these benefits, Rose Hill needed the software to make important day-to-day tasks quick and easy, provide flexible no-hassle billing functions, allow them to obtain patient outcomes at the click of a button, manage medications, and require little to no internal technical support or hardware that needed to be frequently upgraded.  In addition to these features, it was also critical that the system be created and supported by a company with a history of first-rate service and a commitment to ensuring that their organization was properly trained and using the software to realize the total clinical benefit and time and money savings.

After evaluating several electronic medical records systems and companies, Rose Hill called upon NextStep Solutions, with years of success and experience in outcome-based automation software for running programs, and chose NextStep.

Solution

NextStep™ is a web-based automation software for care facilities, ideal for outpatient services, private practice, and residential programs such as Rose Hill.  NextStep Solutions is a Michigan-based company whose success is in providing the highest quality software, services, and training to ensure a successful, turnkey experience.

Rose Hill selected NextStep for three key factors:

Automated Clinical and Administrative Processes: NextStep’s integrated wizards for treatment planning, charting specifically to goals with direct billing, reminding clinical staff of upcoming assessments; plan reviews; medication reviews; and other important milestones, make day-to-day processes at Rose Hill quick and easy.

Extreme Flexibility for a Changing Program:  Using NextStep’s form builder and program templates, changes to Rose Hill’s treatment program, forms, and other important tasks and documents can be made without having to incur costs for ‘customizations’ or rely on technical support.

Cost-Effective, Easy to Manage:   NextStep solved many of the problems addressed by cumbersome “form-based” systems that only offer electronic forms to keep records without any process automation or evidence-based dashboard.  All this without the high costs associated with their previous system and without having to constantly upgrade the hardware and software – NextStep is web-based and all they needed were computers that run Internet Explorer and a high-speed connection to the Internet. 

NextStep offered Rose Hill an easy-to-implement, web-based approach to streamlining a paperless, computer-assisted workflow that has helped to significantly increase organizational efficiency, facilitate team collaboration, and promote individual productivity.  Using NextStep’s built-in outcome model treatment outcomes are presented by consumer, diagnosis, and program.  With this information, Rose Hill continually identifies strengths and weaknesses in a consumer’s progress and in the treatment approach for particular diagnoses at large, refines the approach, and monitors the impact of these improvements – without any extra work or data input.

“NextStep is really amazing, it really shows up other software that just gives you screen after screen to keep records.  You really see the long-term difference in using an automation system as opposed to just electronic records,” said David Ballenberger, Former Executive Director of Rose Hill Center. 

“NextStep has allowed us to transform the way we work.  It has freed up a lot of time for both managers and staff to be able to focus on the important parts of our jobs, providing quality care and working with the consumer, and it’s so easy to use,” explained Gail Ranger, Clinical Director at Rose Hill Center.

Ballenberger continued “If I went in today and told the staff that we were going to turn off NextStep, there would be an insurrection!”

Results

At Rose Hill, NextStep has produced many significant results.  These include:

• There has been a 95% improvement in the completion of treatment plans on time, a 75% reduction in the amount of paper contained in the paper chart, and a 55% reduction in time spent shuffling paper and duplicating efforts.  This savings shows up at the bottom line as a savings of $86,000 per year.

• The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) used NextStep as the method for tracking client care when Rose Hill was assessed for accreditation.  Preparation for accreditation and licensing reviews was cut in half.  The accreditor was able to leave a half a day early due to NextStep, and he complimented NextStep.  NextStep has made fee-based billing only one step.

• NextStep has enabled clinical managers to hold staff accountable to the individual client’s treatment plan without spending any time collecting data.  There has been a significant improvement in the quality of the chart notes written by staff.

• The doctors’ participation in the overall program has greatly increased because they can quickly access up-to-date, quality information.

• NextStep has made it possible for all staff to become familiar with each individual’s goals and objectives in their treatment plan and allows for the implementation of individualized interventions.  There was a 70% increase of clients meeting goals in their plan.

• Rose Hill creates the treatment plans with their residents and families directly on the computer, and the family and consumer can see the plan and easily collaborate with the case manager.  NextStep has impressed consumers and families and properly reflects Rose Hill’s quality program.

• Rose Hill did not have to purchase an expensive server or any other costly hardware because NextStep is hosted by NextStep Solutions over the Internet.  Using the dynamic form builder, they were able to create and modify their own forms without any additional costs.  By eliminating the need for an IT person and other computer-related consulting time, Rose Hill saves $72,000 per year.

“…and there are so many things that we can do now that we could never do before without NextStep,” added David Ballenberger.

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