What are customers saying about iCompass
North Valley Hospital - Case Study
Connie Maden, Director of Administrative Services North Valley Hospital, Tonasket, Washington, USA
Life before iCompass
Well, plainly put, I do not ever want to go back. The data we have to track from our healthcare admin offices has always been significant, and the administrative healthcare duties that I am responsible for continue to grow day by day. If I was to start a list of my responsibilities, I would still be here next week!
I gave a short presentation at a previous AHCAA conference on improving admin office efficiencies using Access for tracking policies and procedures and the beauty of the related reporting capabilities. As my Admin Assistant duties and responsibilities grew (I am now Director and on the Senior Management Team), Access was being utilized more and more for more detailed tracking for contract management and I was beginning the process to generate a foundation for tracking our strategic planning projects as well.
Then, several years ago, I stumbled across iCompass at a city conference (I am also on our local city council). After watching several demos at their vendor booth, I knew I had to have these tools in the admin office of the hospital district. I then arranged for a demo in-house and further negotiated a contract utilizing all of the modules that collectively form their Meeting Management Solution (Meeting Manager, FilePro and Action Tracking modules). North Valley Hospital became the pilot healthcare facility for iCompass Technologies.
Life After iCompass
When I implemented iCompass I soon realized that what I had gained was likened to an office assistant or two at a much reduced expense. I also determined quickly that I now had the ability to access and track important executive data and easily create reports on items that are not tracked through the more sophisticated software - whether within our hospital patient care, financial, or billing software. My research has shown me that separate software packages are very expensive (one firm wanted to charge me $20K a year JUST for a Strategic Planning Tracker). Smaller healthcare facilities cannot feasibly entertain that kind of price point.
Meeting Manager
The iCompass Meeting Manager module alone helps me to completely eliminate paper packets to the board – everything is now online at their disposal any time day or night. Additionally, I now provide that all important transparency to the community.
Action Tracking – General
The iCompass Action Tracking module contains a number of ‘Trackers’ which are highly versatile. They are usable for any department (not just Admin) needing to track any kind of data (such as HR, Plant Engineering, Laundry, Contracts, Strategic Planning, etc.) They also provide powerful capabilities related to keeping lists, producing reports and tracking historical data. These Trackers can be accessed via Meeting Manager or directly within the Action Tracking module. I have the ability to set up notifications and reminders for future timelines (great for contract management). Committee meeting and staff meeting minutes can now be created and funneled into one main depository. Log-in information is set up for all managers to be able to go in, update, access and create their own Trackers, all the while preserving a historical trail of who did what, when.
Action Tracking - Contract Management Tracker
I have over 250 paper contract documents that I manage with one of my Trackers I created - I call it my ‘Contract Management Tracker’. I now attach the pdf contract document to the Tracker item and put the responsibilities for managing the contracts back in the hands of the managers of the appropriate departments with the tracking, reporting, and reminder options. Just having the reminders set for insurance contracts in our billing department can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars of reimbursement if the contracts are negotiated at the appropriate time, ensuring also that they do not fall through the cracks and result in lost revenue.
Action Tracking - Strategic Planning Tracker
The Strategic Planning tracker is becoming a living and breathing tracker/document that will enable managers and supervisors to provide comments on detail of implementation of projects and objectives. I have been working with iCompass application engineers to fine tune this tracker and I am very excited about these capabilities. Imagine a transparent dashboard with admin able to extract data and managers/supervisors able to input comments and attach documentation as to the status of a project. Imagine the ability to track whether a project is on budget, below or over budget with the financial detail attached directly from the responsible staff. These are only a few of the capabilities available to us with this Tracker. At the end of the day, our strategic plan is no longer a set of papers with admin assistants running around to track down information prior to a Strategic Planning or board meeting.
Action Tracking - Employee Suggestions Tracker
This Tracker provides the ability to track when employee suggestions come in, and which Manager is responsible for doing the PDSA and further development. Employees can track the progress of their own suggestion.
FilePro - Document Storage & Search
With FilePro, I manage all of our policies and procedures from my office through the Internet. We had what could have been a real safety issue – nurses could search for policies on my old system but they would also pull up the old archived copies - this was a medication error waiting to happen. Now, everyone can access and search our documents safely via a secure site on the Internet.
iCompass Customer Service - The best!
In almost 3 years, I have not had one issue that iCompass has not handled as a top priority and with the utmost professional customer service. Highlights of their customer service include getting a person on the phone 24/7, a web-based incident reporting process, and their new Customer Advisory Board which will assist iCompass with further on-going functional improvements, new product development and enhanced customer service.
Big thanks to Connie Maden for this Case Study!
Nicky Plato, Marketing Coordinator
