AUGUSTA, ME – The burden of replacing a financial management system turned into an opportunity for MaineGeneral Health.
The Augusta, Me.-based healthcare system went beyond implementing a new software application. It redesigned workflow processes and began the process of going paperless in the business office.
The move to the new Oracle Corp. application, which was deployed in March, is making staff more efficient and laying the groundwork for savings.
The wide-ranging PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management application also will enable the healthcare organization to standardize financial practices at all sites, which include acute care hospitals, physician practices, long-term care facilities, home care and assisting living and retirement communities.
“Because we report financial statements for seven different companies, we wanted to maintain integrity in the financial system and provide good internal control,” said Mary Griswold, the project sponsor for MaineGeneral.
When the organization learned its previous financial software vendor would no longer support the application, Griswold said they began to look for a replacement that would do more than just process transactions. “We wanted a system that would do supply chain management and reporting,” she said.
Going paperless is a top goal for the organization, she said. “We wanted to eliminate handling documents multiple times,” she added. “The average number of times an invoice was handled here was seven times. We also wanted to maximize the use of EDI, and automated invoice processing and purchase orders.”
Before implementing the system, MaineGeneral took a look at how it operated and made changes to improve efficiency and standardization.
“We spent a lot of time on designing processes,” said Sheila Nielsen, the project manager for MaineGeneral. A cross-functional team studied business processes before the software was implemented. The Oracle product could be configured to fit current processes, and the organization knew they had to be optimized.
“We had a very complicated set of accounts,” Griswold said. “If someone wanted a new account, we gave them one. As part of the process, we simplified our general ledger. We eliminated a lot of accounts.”
The standardization also will improve reporting within the organization. This month, MaineGeneral plans to go live with an Oracle dashboard that the management team can use to get a snapshot of systemwide operations.
The healthcare organization hopes to get EDI invoices and e-procurement fully operational in the near future.
Already, invoice handling has been reduced to only two “touches,” compared with the previous seven. Automation will save on paper storage costs and help the organization save money by paying on time and taking advantage of vendor discounts, Nielsen said.
“One thing that really came out of the implementation was really breaking down the silos between functions,” Griswold said. “Now, when there’s a problem, we talk together and fix it.”