Redmont Pediatrics
Birmingham, AL
redmontped.com
Redmont Pediatrics chose PCC as their first EHR system in order to continue their financial and business growth with a dependable partner.
When Redmont Pediatrics decided to take on their first EHR with PCC, the staff expected the switch from paper charts would bring positive change, but what they didn’t expect was to recover from instability and to achieve positive growth too. Dr. Chrissie Cordell, MD FAAP has practiced at Redmont Pediatrics for 13 years and is now president and part-owner of the practice. She finds that the switch to PCC helped change the way she and her colleagues saw EHR technology and had a huge impact on how she sees the business aspect of practicing medicine.
When Dr. Cordell transitioned into leadership in 2019, Redmont Pediatrics used paper charts and Medisys to handle their patient load. “It was about that time that I started paying more attention to the business and financial aspect of the practice and getting a lot more interested in it,” Dr. Cordell says. By this time, the pediatricians knew they had to leave paper and embrace an EHR. “We wanted to start seeing Medicaid patients,” Dr. Cordell explains, “And we knew we would need an EHR for that. We also wanted our patients to have the convenience of a patient portal, electronic prescribing, and so on.”
There were other structural changes at Redmont that made a stable EHR system critical. Their founding pediatrician was preparing to retire, and their practice manager had recently changed, too, which meant that Redmont would need a solution with robust customer service to support them while they transitioned onto the system.
“We invited Paul Vanchiere to come out and consult with us and he of course sang your praises, too. And I think between resources that I’ve learned about from him and then all the resources that PCC has provided, it’s made a huge difference in helping us transition, not just to an EHR, but also to a different way of thinking about the business of medicine. It’s been so helpful for me. PCC has provided outstanding support to someone that really needed to learn a lot!”
Dr. Chrissie Cordell, MD FAAP
Dr. Cordell and her co-managing physician Dr. Walley chose PCC to be the EMR that would best suit their practice after reviewing a variety of EHR systems. While Dr. Cordell’s husband does not work in medicine, he has an MBA and an interest in small business, so he offered his support to Redmont Pediatrics in searching for a solution that would balance their business and clinical needs. Dr. Cordell and her team also called in healthcare business consultant Paul Vanchiere of the Pediatric Management Institute.
“We invited Paul Vanchiere to come out and consult with us and he of course sang your praises, too. And I think between resources that I’ve learned about from him and then all the resources that PCC has provided, it’s made a huge difference in helping us transition, not just to an EHR, but also to a different way of thinking about the business of medicine. It’s been so helpful for me. PCC has provided outstanding support to someone that really needed to learn a lot!”
Reassured by PCC’s reputation of excellent support and Paul’s recommendation to choose a pediatric-specific EHR, Redmont Pediatrics joined PCC in 2019 and almost immediately, their practice’s workflows and business processes began to change.
Dr. Cordell and her team regularly choose from PCC’s myriad resources to make changes that improve her practice’s financial performance. They’ve seen incredible progress, improving their “PCC Financial Pulse” (PCC’s proprietary pediatric financial benchmark) by a staggering 55% in just under 2 years. This benchmark, part of Redmont Pediatrics’ Practice Vitals Dashboard, weighs revenue-per-visit, AR, pricing, and more to help practices measure their performance compared to other PCC practices around the country.
These benchmarks came from data collected from Redmont’s performance each month, and continues to help the practice measure their performance and make adjustments. Where before they might have missed out on revenue, with PCC’s Dashboard they found actionable steps to improve their AR days, revenue-per-visit and pricing to get the revenue they deserve.
She describes some of the resources PCC offered that were so helpful: “I definitely have used the webinars, they have been a great resource on coding and also new legislation that affects pediatrics. Chip’s Blog is really helpful, his podcast and his general advice: to focus on well checks. That’s made a huge difference in our practice. Honestly — if we hadn’t made some of these changes, our practice would be hurting, financially.”
Dr. Chrissie Cordell, MD FAAP
As well as a renewed focus on preventive care, the practice also switched up their recall efforts. PCC’s tools such as broadcast messaging made it easier for Redmont to contact their patients and get them into the office via phone calls, text, and email. “All those were a new part of our workflow when we started with PCC,” says Dr. Cordell. “Really, I think that an emphasis on well-check and well-care has made a big difference. We are providing better care to more of our patients.
“We were stuck in an old way of doing things because that’s the way things had always been done. There was some resistance to change. We had physicians leaving and some staff turnover and a lot of transition. It’s PCC’s culture, the comradery and the resources, that has made a big difference in our practice.”
Dr. Cordell says that in their spare time, Redmont Pediatrics uses PCC’s Dashboard to measure their clinical and financial performance against benchmarks set by other PCC practices. Yet beyond practice management, the staff at Redmont Pediatrics also loves the features of a pediatric-specific EHR in all aspects of the patient visit cycle, from scheduling to billing:
“One feature that’s convenient is having sibling’s charts linked. Often it comes up where you’re in a room with one kid and the mom says, “Has this sibling had this shot?” So having that information easily accessible is so handy. And I think PCC does a good job of connecting the family charts. My front office staff has commented about the billing software that links families and how helpful it is.”
PCC’s tools are built with families and kids in mind, so features such as the Patient Portal help keep the physicians, nurses, and admin staff at Redmont in the loop with both patients and their caregivers. “The patient portal is important and so convenient for parents,” says Dr. Cordell. “My nurses love the portal tool! It’s so much simpler to just type a quick reply than to have to try to track somebody down via phone. I think the portal has been really helpful with telemedicine too. Sending pictures in a portal so that we can look at a rash and then do a telemedicine call about it has worked well for us.”
With an EHR built exactly for what Redmont Pediatrics needed, Dr. Cordell and her staff found the transition from paper to PCC a small revolution — the physicians offer the same quality of excellent healthcare, but found a better balance between efficient clinical workflows, practice management, and financial health. Dr. Cordell reflects that the stability and growth of Redmont Pediatrics depends on the balance of business and medicine — something that PCC has endeavored to support since 1983.
“I had my husband, who knew business really well. I knew medicine really well. And I think having the support of PCC has helped us strike a great balance of excellent care for patients and financial health for our practice.”
