Successfully Navigating the Rapids of Laboratory Practice Management with MedicsPremier

Tamarac Pathology Group (TPG) is a leading, state-of-the-art, high tech pathology laboratory serving Florida’s western central region. TPG performs hundreds of thousands of pathology-related tests annually with quick turnaround times on findings, many of which are done on a same-day basis.

Minerva Ortiz-Rosario, TPG’s Administrator, said, “We’re a high volume facility performing a wide spectrum of pathology tests for hospitals, and for hospital-affiliated and privately owned groups and practices. TPG prides itself on speed and accuracy in providing results. We need speed and accuracy as well from all of our automation.”

A central component in TPG’s automation landscape is MedicsPremier from Advanced Data Systems (ADS).

“It’s a key automation piece because quite simply, nothing beats getting paid, and MedicsPremier gets us paid as much as possible for every test,” Ms. Ortiz-Rosario said. She noted that, “MedicsPremier does everything intelligently with our hospital interface integration. The system is basically ‘plug and play.’ The types of tests being transferred via the interface are quickly processed and claims are created and submitted to payers in batch. Claims go out of MedicsPremier with an extraordinary, off-the-bat success rate and reimbursements come in equally as quickly.”

Ms. Ortiz-Rosario talked about how TPG makes full use of the way MedicsPremier supports real-time claim tracking and denial management. “We’re continually watching to make sure our claims are not sitting unworked. If we do see an idle claim, we’re in touch with the payer quickly. On denials, MedicsPremier helps avoid many of them in advance. For others, we’re able to make the needed edits right now and then resubmit those claims. We’re never blankly staring at scores and scores of denials, wringing our hands not knowing what to do with them. They quickly become revenue for us as well.”

“Our EOBs are enormous. It would probably require teams of people around the clock to get them reconciled, but MedicsPremier handles them almost instantaneously with its incredibly accurate reconciliation feature. Ms. Ortiz-Rosario said.

Ms. Ortiz-Rosario expanded on that, saying, “MedicsPremier automatically submits claims to secondary and tertiary payers. No one has to think about it or do anything. Once ERAs are posted, the claim goes out again to the next payer, if there is one. As soon as a balance becomes the patient’s responsibility, the system will generate a statement showing the amount due as ‘current’ regardless of how long it may have taken any payers to pay. This is incredibly helpful and avoids calls from patients about overdue balances when those balances became their responsibility just now.”

On reports and analytics, Ms. Ortiz-Rosario said, “As anyone can imagine, management and financial key performance indicators (KPIs), analytics and reports are immensely important to TPG, and MedicsPremier leads the way on that as well. The system generates the types of reports needed by laboratories, and displays them in any number of user-defined formats with exportability to Excel®. Basically, whatever you need to report on involving financials or operations, MedicsPremier can do it!”

“MedicsPremier is integrated with the hospital’s (Seven Rivers Medical Center) system creating an interoperable, smooth flow of data. The interface is actually accommodated through the hospital’s HIE. The ADS and HIE teams worked well together in getting that established,” Ms. Ortiz-Rosario said.

On ADS Ms. Ortiz-Rosario said, “They’re a really great company and they know how laboratories operate which is incredibly important. ADS and MedicsPremier represent an ideal combination of vendor and software for laboratories. Their customer service and tech support departments always provide a white glove experience. MedicsPremier is a ‘must see’ if your laboratory is looking for improved revenue and highly comprehensive reporting and analytics.”