MONTGOMERY, AL – In a move to streamline its physician practice billing operations, the Healthcare Authority for Baptist Health an affiliate of UAB Health System in Montgomery, Ala., recently purchased the McKesson Practice Complete package for billing services and practice management.

McKesson’s Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) group will assume responsibility for all aspects of physician billing, accounts receivable management, patient services, claims management and reporting for the organization’s employed physicians. Additionally, the physicians will use the Horizon Practice Plus integrated practice management system, which will be remotely hosted by McKesson.

“Consolidating to one practice management solution that can interface with our electronic health record systems will help streamline our workflow immensely,” said Julia Ventress, vice president, Baptist Health. “In addition, with a remote hosting arrangement, we can avoid the expenses associated with software implementation, maintenance and upgrades.”

As a long-time user of McKesson’s information technology solutions for the hospital, Baptist Health now has tapped the company to help overcome the challenges its physician practices have faced with in-house billing, including attracting and retaining billing office employees. Ventress noted that Baptist Health will also look to McKesson for more effective and actionable business intelligence that can drive continual process improvement.

“McKesson’s billing reports will help us make more informed business decisions, and its coding expertise should make the billing process easier on our physicians and patients,” said Ventress. “We considered replacing our two practice management systems with a single solution to run ourselves, but we realized that to truly optimize our financial performance we need to tap into McKesson’s resources.”

With McKesson’s RMS group, Baptist Health can leverage the expertise of nearly 4,000 employees dedicated to making physician billing processes easier. Additionally, Baptist gains access to robust reports and a repository of billing data that enables the comparison of key metrics and the establishment of benchmarks for ongoing performance monitoring.

“In today’s challenging healthcare environment it’s important for physician practices to have access to tools that make it easier to run their business and focus on patient care,” said Patrick Leonard, senior vice president and general manager for McKesson’s RMS group. “By consolidating their practice management systems and using our RMS group for billing, Baptist Health is ensuring that claims are filed quickly and the collection process works as efficiently as possible.”