MetricStream

MAXIM HEALTHCARE
Overview
As a renowned healthcare company, Maxim constantly strives to provide innovative solutions for improved patient care and service. Its dedication to customer service, combined with a commitment to staff quality has made Maxim the most dependable healthcare companies in the industry. Today, Maxim employs over 56,000 clinicians, allied health professionals, physicians and administrative personnel and has a network of hundreds of local offices spread over in United States of America.

CASE STUDY

EXCELLENCE IN QUALITY AND COMPLIANCE IN PATIENT CARE THROUGH AUTOMATED BUSINESS PROCESSES

Benefits
Efficiency: The average cycle times for issue resolutions and corrective actions has gone down substantially as the automated workflows take cases through the investigation and closure process without delays. Email notifications, task list, and case status reports on the users homepage keeps pending tasks on top of the mind improving responsiveness and proactive participation. Visibility: With MetricStream, Maxim has complete visibility into quality and compliance programs like audits, inspections and complaints across its locations. This transparency has made quality management a predictable process while lowering the potential liabilities and risks. Data-driven: Access to quality information and the ability to analyze this data in real-time is allowing Maxim to monitor process performance metrics that provide a sound basis for ongoing continuous improvement. Quality issues are now proactively identified, tracked and resolved and decisions are based on hard facts and metrics. The powerful analytics and reporting capability with graphical dashboards allows managers to adopt a data-driven approach to quality management.

Maxim has unyielding standards for quality of service and compliance with government regulations and industry mandates. As a federally regulated organization, it adheres to the stringent requirements associated with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Maxim has established and maintains a comprehensive quality assurance program designed to improve and maintain a level of client care consistent with its internal policies and industry standards.

Challenge
Maxim has quality management principles well embedded across all its service delivery processes. The implementation of these processes was being supported by a number of heterogeneous systems developed and managed in house for recording data, capturing deviations and monitoring trends and metrics. As the company workforce grew and operations expanded to a large number of locations, Maxim faced the challenge of ensuring consistency in how the quality processes were practiced and followed. As many quality programs were being managed locally at the departmental level, it was critical that the entire company followed a common set of guidelines and principles. Moreover, quality and compliance managers were spending excessive amount of time in administrative tasks such as managing documents, completing data entry and compiling information rather than on high-value activities like analyzing trends. As there was no single system of record for consolidating the data, access to information was difficult creating a management summary report for deviations or complaints would takes hours or even days. With all scheduling, assignments, communication and follow-ups done manually through informal emails and phone calls, there was no way to track the progress of a program.

Solution
We initiated the process of selecting a robust compliance and quality system, evaluating proven qualities of the application, implementation capabilities and the cost of ownership. At the end of the evaluation process, the MetricStream solution emerged as our preferred choice, said Tom Rawlings, National Director of Corporate Compliance at Maxim Healthcare Services. MetricStream provided Maxim with rich out-of-the-box features and the flexibility to be expanded and modified to meet its future needs. The MetricStream solution has been implemented to automate and improve auditing, corrective actions and complaints handling - critical business processes that support delivery of quality patient care. The system provided a complete set of pre-defined, standard, role-based workflows that were rapidly configured based on Maxims own business rules and policies. MetricStreams CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action) Management solution identifies and captures various quality and compliance related issues in companys operations and drives the root-cause analysis and problem solving based on industry best practices. Its analytics and reporting capabilities enable quality managers to monitor trends and take proactive preventive actions. MetricStreams Audit Management solution has been implemented to help Maxim manage a wide range of audit-related activities, data and processes. The system provides end-to-end functionality for managing the complete audit lifecycle including audit planning and scheduling, development of standard audit plans and checklists, field data collection, development of audit reports and recommendations, review of audit recommendations by auditees and management and implementation of audit recommendations and remediation. MetricStreams Complaints Management solution has streamlined and centralized Maxims entire complaints handling process. The real-time visibility provided by the solution enables Maxim to track each complaint through its lifecycle from initiation to closure - following the appropriate process to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

MetricStream
Why MetricStream
Robust Enterprise Compliance Platform with a broad set of functional applications Ability to configure off-the-shelf solutions to adapt to best practices followed in the company Powerful reports and dashboards that provide visibility for driving continuous improvement Web-based architecture with an intuitive and easy-touse user interface that ensures quick adoption

The solutions have be deployed on the MetricStream Enterprise Compliance Platform, an integrated framework for supporting all compliance and quality processes in a company and for driving effective risk management and corporate governance. By improving operational efficiencies in quality systems, Maxim has lowered the cost of compliance and created a transparent environment for proactively identifying, tracking and resolving quality issues.

Powerful IT systems are critical to Maxims mission to offer highquality healthcare. We initiated the process of selecting a robust compliance and quality system, evaluating proven qualities of the application, implementation capabilities and the cost of ownership. At the end of the evaluation process, the MetricStream solution emerged as our preferred choice. It comes with rich out-of-the-box features and the flexibility to be expanded and modified to meet our future needs. says Tom Rawlings, National Director of Corporate Compliance, Maxim Healthcare Services.

Powerful IT systems are critical to Maxims mission to offer high-quality healthcare, said Rawlings. With MetricStreams solution, Maxim has achieved a significant improvement in its performance metrics and set a new standard for its own operations.

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