How a Provider-Owned Hospital Reduced Administrative Burden and Improved Financial Outcomes with Ludi

The Challenge

As a growing organization, Western Reserve’s leadership is always looking for new ways to streamline their operational processes and minimize administrative stress for their medical teams.

Historically, Western Reserve – a provider-owned hospital based in Ohio – has paid providers for their administrative time in the form of a medical directorship. Medical directorship contracts were managed by different areas of the hospital and tracking provider time on paper was a heavy lift for their finance department, especially when it came time to create analytical reports on their provider expenditures and file routine Medicare cost reports. The leadership team realized how cumbersome this paper-based process had become for its staff. Wanting to introduce more standardization into this process and streamline their provider payments into one centralized system, Western Reserve set out to find a technology solution partner that could help them achieve their goals.

The Solution

After researching a variety of technology options, Western Reserve selected Ludi and their automation platform that makes it easier for hospitals to track, audit and manage payments to providers. One of the key reasons Western Reserve decided to implement Ludi was due to the increased levels of transparency the platform offered. Specifically, if a provider makes a mistake logging their time, with Ludi, it is very easy to track this data and resubmit it in a few clicks online, no paper required. This was a tremendous relief for Western Reserve, because in the past, this issue used to take hours of administrative staff time to resolve.

The Results

1. Increased Provider Satisfaction

Western Reserve has achieved a 100% provider adoption rate of Ludi’s technology with full support from their medical teams. Specifically, their providers have appreciated the simplicity in logging time from their smart phones and the transparency it offers around their payment history.

Now that we have everything electronic, we can pull data for budgets, look at comparisons by provider, look at past payments by provider, make decisions about continuing or condensing agreements, and really manage our business better.

Nealie D’Abate
Vice President, Professional Services and Chief Learning Officer

2. Enhanced Financial Processes

They now have better access to critical data, such as total provider contract spend enterprise-wide, which helps guide their budgeting and contract negotiations. According to Nealie D’Abate, Vice President of Professional Services and Chief Learning Officer at Western Reserve, “Now that we have everything electronic, we can pull data for budgets, look at comparisons by provider, look at past payments by provider, make decisions about continuing or condensing agreements, and really manage our business better. Having the time logs flow electronically from submitter to reviewer and then to Accounts Payable has made the process of submitting provider time for payment much more efficient. The accounting staff also has visibility to pending time logs even before they are signed to assist with accruals at month end.”

3. Ensured Compliance and Risk Abatement

Ludi’s technology also has enabled the organization even more to dig into their contracts to ensure their physicians’ duties are consistent with what the hospital actually needs the physicians to do. This allows the physicians to focus on their clinical care and not worry about administrative details.

4. Centralized Location for All Payments

The Western Reserve team also appreciates that the Ludi system acts as one source of truth for all of their payments across the entire hospital, for finance, medical and administrative teams alike.

One Final Note

According to Nealie, Ludi literally “pays for itself.”

In addition, Nealie shared that, “The quality of our provider time documentation has improved and is now in a more consistent format. Hours are submitted on time from our providers, which is likely due to the automated submission reminders providers receive.”