Choosing an EHR software vendor is a big decision, with many aspects to consider. You want to make sure the software's features and functionality can deliver what your practice needs. But only looking at a vendor's software is a mistake. When choosing an EHR vendor to use for your pediatric office, it is important to not only take into consideration the software itself, but to also look at how well they support their clients.
PCC is always looking for ways to strive in their field, to not settle for being like everyone else. That philosophy is what informed the idea of our current support model of a Client Advocate system. In this model, each person on the support team is assigned to work with specific practices in a proactive way during regularly scheduled, ongoing calls. In the old support model, a more generic approach common to many EHR vendors, a client would potentially talk to a different support member each time they called. Calls were usually the result of an emergency, with no time for assessing overall practice health. Now, clients can work with the same CA over time, working on projects and addressing any issues before they become emergencies. This unique relationship between the advocate and the client is one of the many things that sets PCC apart from other EHR companies.
Benefits of Having a Client Advocate
PCC has seen vast improvement in the satisfaction of their clients as a result of the new model. Client Advocates work with practices on all kinds of things, from teaching practice management skills, to explaining how to use various software features, to bigger picture projects that will improve office efficiency and workflow.
Some examples of projects CAs have helped clients with include:
- Getting ERAs into the system. When some clients were manually posting every payment, Client Advocates were able to teach them how to post payments automatically. They also got the practices set up to receive payments electronically rather than as checks, thereby speeding up the revenue cycle.
- It can be easy for clients to fall behind on managing their patient population (e.g., who is active, who is inactive, who is overdue for a well visit or a vaccine, etc.) so Client Advocates have helped clients with a program called autoflag. This program runs a nightly scan on the patient population of an office and flags patients or accounts based on specific criteria. It can help practices easily single out patients who need to be recalled for things like appointments or vaccines.
- Client advocates can provide ongoing training for their clients on billing tasks, front desk tasks (e.g., checking patients in, verifying insurance eligibility, etc.), or other practice management skills. This type of ongoing work builds relationships between PCC and clients.
How PCC Deals with Emergencies
While the Client Advocate support model helps clients proactively, PCC's support also stands out in times of crisis. Here's an example:
The technical support team got a call after hours on Tuesday, October 10th and learned that there had been a devastating fire in the building of one of PCC's clients. The client lost all their hardware in the fire and could not access their schedule. They called PCC to see if there was any way to get their appointment list in order to notify their patients about what had happened.
The technical support team worked together with PCC's IT manager to quickly figure out a solution. Part of the job of the IT team is to make sure things are running smoothly, and to run multiple backups in case this type of thing happens. The team was on top of this and so they could immediately begin working on the process of hosting in the cloud. PCC had already been working on this process just in case a situation like this occurred. They ran the script that they had created in advance and made a client server. Google has a data center in Iowa for offsite backups. The team contacted Google and got the server up and running, and was able to restore the server from the client's office. With the team able to respond so quickly and efficiently, in only two hours the process had been completed and the client could access their information.
Why is it Helpful to Have a Client Advocate in this Situation?
PCC knows that when a client has a major emergency like this, it is not only important to fix the immediate problem, but to help them through the healing process as well. Something like the burning down of a building does not go away overnight. The effect is long and lasts far beyond the initial blow. When the Client Advocate got into his office the next day, he had an email from the Office Manager of the practice notifying him what happened. He immediately let them know that he was there for whatever help they needed. Since he had built a relationship between himself and the client over time as their Client Advocate, the client felt comfortable reaching out for help. He scheduled calls with the practice's office manager every day to check in and see how they were doing. It is not unusual for Client Advocates to go above and beyond to support their client like this. It can mean the world to someone just to know that help is there if they need it. That is the level of support that PCC provides.
PCC's support team responds quickly and effectively in emergency situations, and provides support for clients far past the initial problem through the Client Advocate system. That's part of why KLAS reports for the past year gave PCC a 92.1 out of 100 for their EHR service. This compares to an industry average of 76.5. With PCC, clients are in good hands.
