Get the Most Value from Your Technology Investment with Consensus’ Managed Services

By Terry LaPointe, Group VP - Services, Consensus Cloud Solutions

Over many years supporting our hospital clients, we're seeing that the bedside and patient procedure rooms aren't the only healthcare settings that continue to face significant labor shortages. We know technology personnel can be hard to find and even harder to retain. These are the vital employees responsible for keeping the IT operation rolling, and they maintain everything from management of the EHR and integrated PACS system to the firewall, and keeping the application servers online.

In the healthcare industry we have noticed the obvious deficit of skilled professionals in IT and these shortages require immediate attention. A 2021 survey from Gartner shows that nearly two-thirds of IT executives say that labor shortages are the most significant barrier to adopting emerging technology. That compares with just 4% who expressed this sentiment in 2020. Throughout the hospitals we work with, talent gaps were noted across most areas of IT, including infrastructure and platform services, database systems, network, security, IT automation, and storage.

With the needs of both staff and patients that benefit from technology firmly in mind, we are excited to announce that Consensus Cloud Solutions now offers IT consulting and support services for our healthcare technology solutions, including managed integration and automation programs, due to our latest important acquisition.

Our recent purchase of Summit Healthcare includes a robust professional services department that helps healthcare organizations meet their integration needs while maximizing technology investments. We are investing further in healthcare technology services to bring even more product and solution support to our valued clients.

When a dedicated healthcare IT person leaves, integration and automation efforts can stall amidst the turmoil of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement - not to mention the loss of institutional knowledge about current IT projects. Our team of deeply experienced and well-versed healthcare industry professionals develop, build, integrate and support all of our technology offerings in-house. We offer a wide variety of solutions that work with multiple vendor platforms and applications. That's why so many customers trust us with managing their enterprise integration environment.

Not only do we provide tenured engineers that can become a permanent extension of your staff, our team can also tackle complex initiatives or unlock tips and tricks you may not have known existed. The benefits of partnering with us include:

• Better use of allocated resources, enabling your staff to focus on core hospital initiatives
• Decreased time associated with recruiting, training, and retaining staff
• Ability to backfill positions at a cost far less than hiring a new FTE
• Support services that are reliable, fast, flexible, and available 24/7/365

Integration Services

Our integration services include an in-depth analysis of your current technology to ensure your organization is fully maximizing your IT spend.

Let's look at one recent example: Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California. The 350-bed full-service, community hospital turned to us to add integrations to its admissions, discharge, and transfer (ADT) system. In addition to 35 internal systems, Valley Presbyterian also shares data with external partners - each of which needs a unique integration based on the endpoint requirements.

Our engineers are supporting and supplementing internal IT staff in making these connections happen. We provide project management services and coordinate all interface builds and projects, freeing up time and resources of hospital staff and allowing them to focus on other core tasks.

Automation Services

Today more than ever, the healthcare industry has an excellent opportunity to leverage robotic process automation (RPA) to quickly and easily handle labor-intensive tasks that machines can do as well as humans. CAQH, a non-profit alliance of health plans and associations working to streamline the business of healthcare, notes that the U.S. healthcare system could save $16.3 billion by fully automating nine common transactions.

We take part in the management of many automation projects, including:

• Creating new Meditech accounts for health systems using robotic process automation and self-service technologies (RPA/SST)
• Ensuring accuracy by detecting a spreadsheet and using a "yes/no" determination to create new users in the correct system
• Emailing Preop education materials to patients a few days before their scheduled surgeries using the daily data run for upcoming surgeries
• Verifying that meaningful use measures are on track by emailing reports to department heads that verify statistics and ensure processes are precisely followed

Our managed services can help healthcare organizations streamline clinical and administrative tasks such as patient registration or scheduling; employee credentialing; materials management and inventory ordering; dictionary/domain updates; and posting comments to patient accounts. On the revenue cycle management side, automation can help with patient payments and invoicing; billing/charge entry; remittance posting; payroll/personnel updates; bad debt write-offs, and more.

About eFax ™ Corporate:

With our flagship, global cloud faxing solution, we've been in the technology business for more than 25 years, providing best-in-class digital cloud faxing, workflow, interoperability, and notifications solutions. With this new acquisition, we can now offer best-in-class managed integration and automation services to help you get the most from your Consensus Cloud Solutions' investments throughout the continuum of care.

About Consensus Cloud Solutions:

Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: CCSI) is the world's largest digital fax provider and a trusted global source for the transformation, enhancement and secure exchange of digital information.
In addition to our industry-leading products and services listed above, we also offer: digital signature; data extraction using natural language processing and artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation solutions. Our products and services help increase profits and improve outcomes for healthcare systems and various regulated industries. For more information about Consensus, visit consensus.com and follow @ConsensusCS on Twitter to learn more.

Learn More About Consensus Managed Services:[email protected]

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