Sharp Community Medical Group

What started as an initiative to implement an electronic health record (EHR) solution throughout its physician network evolved into a larger effort that also included an enterprise-wide practice management (PM) solution. Sharp Community Medical Group (SCMG) saw an opportunity to implement technology that could help the organization increase the efficiency of its managed-care operations, while simultaneously helping its practices automate processes and share information. The SCMG staff manually handled referrals, authorizations and insurance eligibility verification, a method that was labor-intensive and inefficient.

Practices within the SCMG network were unable to electronically share patient information, lab results, radiology images or other data sources since there was no infrastructure in place to support electronic sharing. The result was redundant patient information residing within each practice the patient visited. In addition, the majority of practices were reliant upon manual processes to generate paper-based claims for billing payers.

SCMG evaluated solutions from many vendors but selected Allscripts for two primary reasons. First, some of the SCMG staff had used Allscripts solutions in their previous jobs and were quite satisfied with the system’s performance and capabilities. Second, SCMG knew it needed its EHR and PM solutions to be deployed in a hosted configuration, which would allow the organization to rapidly deploy the solution at more than 200 practices. Allscripts already had customers using its solutions in a hosted model, so SCMG was satisfied the solution would meet its demands.

Originally, SCMG planned to have Sharp HealthCare’s IT department host the solutions. The Sharp® IT department supports more than 400 applications and was engaged in several major initiatives at the time, including the implementation of the Allscripts Enterprise EHR at Sharp Rees-Stealy Physician Group.

• Deploy eight solutions per month
• Submit claims electronically
• Receive reimbursement in days, instead of months
• Strive to maximize stimulus funding