St James Hospital use of Slainte Technologies platform delivers €13m improvement
Published: 23rd April, 2010 | Category: Press, Press Coverage
St James Hospital has recovered between €5 million and €6 million in a single year by processing health insurance claims electronically, Finance Director, Brian Fitzgerald said. Hospitals such as St James’s incurred millions in bad debts through the paper processing of claims.
The HSE estimated in a report three years ago that hospitals were owed €76 million from health insurance companies as a result of “incomplete data and administrative error” which had led to bad debts. St James’s and Tallaght hospital were owed €21 million between them.
Mr Fitzgerald estimated that the introduction of Claimsure a year ago had saved 45 per cent in the administration costs doubling the amount collected from €13 million in 2006 to €26 million last year with fewer staff. In 2006 they had four staff and needed four more, now they have three staff processing claims from VHI Healthcare.
“The four people collected about €3.5 million each. The three other people are collecting between €8 million and €9 million each. The only way they can do this is to be able to trace a claim electronically,” he said. Claimsure was introduced in April last year and allows the hospital to electronically submit claims to VHI for processing.VHI director of claims John Creedon said the software has halved the times for claims to be processed and was a “win-win” for all concerned.
Claimsure was developed by Sláinte Technologies based in Sandyford, Co Dublin. Claimsure is its flagship product. It is an electronic revenue management solution that improves cash-flow for healthcare providers. It is now to be rolled to nine other health centres nationwide including the Mater public hospital, the Galway Clinic and the Euromedic clinics.
St James’s Hospital chief executive Ian Carter said Claimsure had been so successful that the savings allowed it to keep wards open and money to be redirected to new diagnostic equipment.
“All our revenue and cash metrics have improved markedly since the introduction of the Claimsure process. Our cash income has doubled, our current debtor days have been slashed, and our bad debt provisions have been effectively eliminated,” he said. The HSE’s assistant national director of finance, Kieran Madden, said moving from a completely manual paper process to an electronic submission platform was always a target milestone that had now been realised.
“Bringing associated reductions in overhead and administration, it is an example of the opportunities available to deliver performance improvements while lowering costs,” he said.He also revealed that the HSE now intended to roll out similar technology across the system to realise major reductions in administrative and financing costs.
Andrew Murphy, CEO of Slainte Technologies: ‘The Claimsure platform is a complete claims management system that manages the entire lifecycle of a medical insurance claim with health insurers. Integrating the Claimsure platform into St. James’s Hospital Patient Administration system has resulted in a seamless link between patient registration and VHI claim generation’.