Medcor’s ERM system leads to healthier organization

Medcor, a provider of innovative health services and proprietary software systems, was looking for a solution to automate tasks in its IT and HR departments. The company wanted to centralize and manage all requests and increase consistency and compliance within the organization.

Integral to Medcor’s business is hiring and placing qualified medical professions, as well as the corresponding paperwork associated with the new hire process. Applications, I-9 forms and release forms for background checks and credentialing need to be filed, tracked, processed, sent via overnight mail to the applicant and then overnighted back to Medcor to be further processed and finalized.

Medcor sought an enterprise request management (ERM) system that:

• was easy to use and implement, so that employees at headquarters and medical professionals at more than 170 clinic locations could easily access and adopt new automated processes;
• could immediately automate the new hire process to save time and money;
• integrated with its existing systems, including the HR system from Sage and its CRM systems; and
• would grow with the company and allow further automation of processes in other departments over time.

Medcor decided to implement Integrify in 2008, using concurrent licenses, which allowed every employee to access a single portal for all automated processes. Medcor also used the Integrify plug-ins--Database Push and Database Pull--to configure its Integrify environment and to connect Integrify processes with data from other systems. The company also signed on for the Integrify Remote Sync Service to synchronize Integrify user accounts and permissions with existing corporate directories.

Today, Medcor’s Integrify system has been upgraded to Version 6.0, and additional plug-ins, such as Excel Import, Dynamic Assigner, Dynamic Notification, Web Service, Open URL and API Web Services, have been added.

Alex Petersen, IT business intelligence manager at Medcor, says, “They’re not all used every day, but we do use some of them pretty extensively, such as Dynamic Notification, Database Pull and Database Push, and going forward probably some of these others will be incorporated into our newer processes as well.”

Integrify can be used by all of Medcor's 900 employees, whether they are located at its headquarters, one of its clinics, satellite offices--even its mobile workers. Twenty-five automated processes are enabled by Integrify, and the system handles 400 to 500 requests per month now, the same amount handled in Medcor’s first year using the system.

The most important functionality of Medcor’s new system is its usefulness to the IT department. IT receives the most requests through the system, because employees at more than 170 remote clinic sites make hardware, software and wireless requests using Integrify.

“We have locations all over the country,” Petersen says, “and when we have a new location start up, the manager requests equipment and communication services from IT, and tracking it through Integrify is much more efficient than the alternative.”

The company’s next biggest user is the human resources department, which has completely automated its new hire process using the system. Integrify allows the HR department to give new employee candidates a user name and password, pre-populate a lot of the forms and have them start the new hire process immediately.

Medcor CIO Tim Sahouri says, “Getting new employees on board faster means our clients will get medical professionals ready to deliver care more quickly.”

When new employees need to be added to the system, HR receives requests to set them up on payroll as well as complete other new employee paperwork. Also, managers can maintain performance notes and yearly review information, using one of the plug-ins that Medcor has employed.

Petersen explains, “We have Integrify do the heavy lifting on that process side, and then we collect the information and push it to a database that one of our programmers set up. We have other processes sprinkled here and there throughout the company—we have one for compliance and legal, when clients request medical records be released, and then there are a couple for the operations team.”

Integrify 6 is a 100 percent Web-based solution for enterprise request management that allows companies to automate requests and streamline processes. The software provides form creation, routing definition and tracking tools to those responsible for processing requests, minimizing data entry and simplifying requests for approval and fulfillment. Because it is Web-based, Integrify allows for easy user accessibility and management of business processes. The solution eliminates problems typically related to labor-intensive processes such as manual paper handling and e-mail requests, and can reduce costs per transaction 60 to 90 percent as opposed to paper-based processes, according to Integrify.

Version 6 is also available as an on-demand solution (SaaS) that offers the full functionality of the Integrify software via the Internet without requiring on-site installation and maintenance of the software.

Integrify says most workflow processes are error-prone during paper-based data collection, difficult for employees to identify and follow, and for administrators to track and manage. Integrify's common request management interface and automated workflow efficiently manage requests. Process improvements can be identified, and resources required to respond can often be reduced.

Petersen says, “One of the biggest benefits to Medcor, with our locations all over the country, is that it’s so much easier to tell all employees to go to one place to find whichever request they need. It helps tremendously because we’re not receiving e-mails and phone calls from all over the place. It definitely makes it much easier on the administrator’s side because they can review all the requests and tasks in one place, and they can see what’s still pending and where it’s held up. From what I can see, it just makes our processes a lot smoother and easier to manage.”

Petersen adds that as the company signed more clients and set up more remote locations, Integrify has simplified the start-up and shutdown processes so that the IT department can take care of all requests in a timely manner.

According to Medcor’s estimates, the time and money saved by automating the new hire process alone was significant, reducing costs and expediting the on-boarding process for each applicant by three to five days.

According to Petersen, Medcor continues to look for new ways to employ the Integrify system across more departments within the company. He anticipates some new plug-ins that the Integrify team is developing.

“We’re also working on an all-inclusive request stop for our marketing department and have other requests in the works with our training, operations and employee screening services departments,” Petersen says. “From my end, I think it’s a very nice system. It makes everything about my job easier. For all the people who use it on a regular basis, it makes things a lot easier to be able to manage everything in one place.”

(Image courtesy of ShutterStock.com)