Advisory Services automates reporting and accelerates insights

Formed in 2021 through the collaboration of six independent orthopedic practices, OrthoLoneStar is the largest independent orthopedic practice in the state of Texas, with a total of 325 providers. Its physician team consists of 180 board-certified orthopedic surgeons who specialize in various areas, including spine surgery, sports medicine, joint replacement, and more.

Several challenges arose with managing and growing six practices that were previously separate. A lack of standardization in capturing financial trends, manual and error-prone processes for testing and validation, and cumbersome data aggregation and reporting workflows led to an inability to effectively measure performance. Additionally, the time and effort it took to pull the data together and write the reports left little opportunity to identify and act on insights to make meaningful change.

Advisory Services custom dashboards uncover insights and create efficiency

Recognizing the need for athenaOne data and Snowflake experts, OrthoLoneStar reached out to athenaOne Advisory Services, athenahealth’s in-house data and analytics, for help. Our Advisory Services team worked collaboratively with OrthoLoneStar to understand their pain points and data and reporting gaps. Our consultative approach and data expertise led to the creation of custom data sets and dashboards to automate the data aggregation and reporting work that was previously done manually. Through this engagement, the Advisory Services team enabled them to make informed decisions and effectively manage their clinics, all while retaining autonomy over their operations.

• Net new dashboards, including a physician month-to-month dashboard that provides insights into trailing twelve months, performance metrics, and patient trends (including visits, procedures, injections, and associated revenue).
• Formalized business rules for all metrics, including automation and storage in a single secure location, to address the lack of standardization.
• Enhanced month-to-month dashboard with additional performance metrics and trends such as Days in A/R, wRVUs, Days Worked, Payor Mix, and Top 10 Procedures.

“This has allowed me to work at the highest and best use for my role, which is using the data to help drive business decisions, not mining the data myself.”

Alicia Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, OrthoLoneStar

Real-time insights without the time-consuming manual work

With the newly created dashboards and reports, OrthoLoneStar’s CEO and CFO were able to quickly assess the financial performance of all six practices and gain real-time insights to drive meaningful change. Replacing their existing reports and expanding insights to include metrics for comparing and trending provider performance by practice and specialty resulted in an 8% year-over-year improvement in work RVUs, the Relative Value Units used by Medicare to support the calculation of physician reimbursements.

Alicia Daniel, Chief Financial Officer at OrthoLoneStar, is thrilled with the visibility that she now has due to the collaboration with the Advisory Services Analytics Consulting team. She says, “Having insight into the performance of the organization readily available at my fingertips has allowed for me to more quickly assess what could be an issue. It takes a significant burden off our workload and allows us to really focus on what’s important. This has allowed me to work at the highest and best use for my role, which is using the data to help drive business decisions, not mining the data myself.”

Overall, the practice was able to leverage Advisory Services Analytics Consulting to see valuable performance gains, including:

• 7% increase in return patient visits
• 9% improvement in contractual adjustments
• 4% improvement in filled appointments
• 10% increase in charges
• 7% improvement in payments

athenaOne Advisory Services can save you time and money

Our Advisory Services team can provide dedicated support to your organization, combining deep industry knowledge with seasoned expertise in athenahealth’s products and data analytics to help you transform your business ideas into realities. Learn more about how Advisory Services can help you.