Scaling patient care and business growth

Dr. Kara Hartl spent 15 years serving and caring for patients in rural Alaska. When encountering patients from deeply rural areas with multiple chronic conditions, she came across many of them who needed to see a specialist that was up to 400 miles away. Patients were faced with the difficult decision to either significantly delay care, or fly out of state for necessary treatment, and Dr. Hartl knew she needed to provide an alternative. And thus, Troy Medical was born. Founded in rural Alaska, Troy Medical connects patients in rural, underserved populations to long-term specialist care through virtual appointments. Patients attend those virtual visits from a Troy Medical clinic site, providing staffing support for the patient and telehealth clinician alike.

Hartl knew she’d need a comprehensive tech stack in her practice to enable her multi-specialty, multi-modality model to succeed. “I spent weeks looking for the most robust, most nimble, most impressive software,” Hartl explained. “I wanted something that was comprehensive from the beginning all the way to the end, through the billing and revenue cycle management.” After talking to almost 30 peers across the specialties she wanted to offer at Troy Medical, athenahealth’s cloud-based, doctor-friendly, simple-to-use EHR clearly came out on top.

Partnering with athenahealth for end-to-end revenue cycle support has allowed Troy Medical to scale their unique model by adding more providers and a secondary location. “athenahealth worked with us to redefine the model because of the uniqueness of our practice,” said Hartl. “The team we had behind us has been nothing but spectacular, and we have been wildly successful. 

Improving efficiency and financial performance with revenue cycle management services

Prior to founding Troy Medical, Hartl had always handled revenue cycle tasks, like medical coding, all on her own. Coding properly required extensive training, and revenue cycle management was a constant source of stress and risk. “Medical coding is complex, and it’s scary because we’re liable for whatever we put out there,” Hartl explained. “If we don’t do it right, Medicare comes after us.” Not only is getting the claim coded and out the door an enormous task, but resolving claim denials and managing authorization requests were equally complex and becoming increasingly onerous.

When Hartl opened Troy Medical, she incuded athenahealth’s extended revenue cycle management services (athenaOne® Medical Coding, athenaOne® Authorization Management, and athenaOne® Enhanced Claim Resolution) as a part of the overall athenaOne solution suite for her practice to lessen the administrative burden for her providers and improve the efficiency of her entire operation. “We’ve worked with athena’s coding team to maximize coding and ensure that we have enough documentation to code correctly every time,” said Hartl. “athena’s enhanced coding is fantastic because it allows physicians to have the comfort that they’re going to get the right code, and it’s standardized, so we’re able to take the onus of that burden off their shoulders.”

And just as importantly, automating core features of their revenue cycle management through athenahealth has helped Troy Medical maximize financial performance. “Being able to outsource and automate this as much as possible, you save yourself so much money,” said Hartl. In just a year and a half, the practice has achieved a 1.04% coding-related denial rate, 93% average payer collection yield, and 53% reduction in days in accounts receivable. “There’s no question whatsoever that what athena has done for us with coding and assisting our doctors is second to none,” said Hartl. “I would never do anything else.”

Scaling for business growth across the country

Thanks to the comprehensive nature of athenaOne and the added capabilities of athenahealth’s expanded revenue cycle services, Troy Medical is thriving — and they’re just getting started. “We have utilized everything athenahealth has offered, and we’re soaring,” said Hartl.

Troy Medical has plans for major growth, starting with a new location in rural Texas. athenahealth’s scalable, comprehensive solution provides the support they need to achieve their growth goals. “We’re expanding now into our second clinic, and our plan is to take this national,” Hartl explained. “This is scalable across all the patients in rural areas that don’t have access. Our vision is to bring spectacular, world-class medical care into small-town America.”