At A Glance

When you partner with Tegria, you’re definitely partnering with a company that cares about you and wants to see you succeed.

Brian Heersink, IT Director

Background and Challenge

Leaders at San Luis Valley Health (SLVH), a nonprofit community health provider with 49 beds across two hospitals and five clinics in Colorado, were dissatisfied with their electronic health record (EHR) technology and decided to take action. They needed a more robust, integrated EHR to support their clinical and financial operations. Financial stability was a principal concern to SLVH, whose payer mix was 70% Medicare/Medicaid.

SLVH considered a number of EHR solutions and selected MEDITECH because it provides a single, highly credible, comprehensive, and integrated system. SLVH leaders then chose Tegria to provide bundled advisory, implementation, hosting, and application support services, as well as a large implementation team.

Solution

Tegria led SLVH through a two-year planning and implementation project that involved physician and staff leaders at every stage. Tegria’s deep MEDITECH expertise, healthcare industry knowledge, and skilled project management helped SLVH avoid costly problems and delays. 

With dedicated on-site support through planning, implementation, and go-live, Tegria helped SLVH achieve their goal of deploying their MEDITECH EHR on time and on budget. The success of the partnership prompted SLVH to partner with Tegria for managed services application support. “The team has had a monumental impact on our business regarding the knowledge they bring to the table. They’ve been so incredibly smart, and they’ve got so much experience working with other hospitals. They’ve provided us input and value beyond anything we’ve ever experienced before,” said Brian Heersink, SLVH IT director. 

Results

After a successful go-live, SLVH’s new MEDITECH system was embraced by clinicians and staff. Heersink credits the success to a coordinated joint effort by Tegria, MEDITECH, and internal staff, along with months of carefully planned communications to educate internal users.  

“Our MEDITECH implementation had a big impact on our community and our staff,” said Heersink. “Our A/R days went down. We feel that we’re in better compliance with HIPAA with all of the reporting tools and statistics.”  

Post-launch, Tegria’s ongoing managed services relieved SLVH’s internal IT team of day-to-day support, enabling internal staff to focus on high-priority work. “We were doing so much managing servers and managing the legacy EMR. Tegria took on so much of that,” Heersink said. “Combined with MEDITECH’s efficiencies, it relieves such a big burden for IT.” 

Prior to implementation, SLVH established financial and performance metrics to track key outcomes.  

Implementation results included: 

• Higher reimbursement rates 
• Increased revenue/cash flow  
• Decreased A/R days 
• Faster ED turnaround times  
• Shorter wait times  
• Greater scheduling availability  
• Improved provider experience