Cedar Valley Medical Specialists

THE CVMS STORY

Manual Process Reduced Visibility

By handling the majority of the administrative and practice management functions for physicians and specialists, CVMS frees up providers to concentrate their efforts on clinical care. As a fully independent organization, CVMS has established and manages meaningful relationships with each of the hospitals in the Cedar Valley area. As more facilities joined CVMS, the need for a level of corporate infrastructure to help with functions including procurement, inventory management, finance and accounts payable became clear.

“With more and more organizations coming together, and manual processes being the way business was conducted, we had a lot of paperwork being passed back and forth between offices,” said Patty Chapman, Controller. “Individual facilities were setting up their own accounts with vendors, buyers were sourcing products directly from multiple vendors, we were using multiple ship-to addresses, and then ultimately, invoices would be received by the corporate office. We needed to get invoices paid, but didn’t have the visibility to know if they were accurate, and didn’t have a great way to identify and resolve discrepancies.”

 A Scalable and Flexible Use of Envi

The team at CVMS selected Envi for the flexibility it provided in working across multiple, autonomous facilities, with varying supply management goals. For example, a number of clinics prefer handling all supply purchasing through Envi, while some of the smaller clinics continue to manually order supplies. For those ordering directly through vendors, a corporate AP team member enters orders into Envi on the back-end, to create the visibility and data that will help build greater reporting accuracy and tracking.

“We’re working together with several offices to review monthly spend, look at spend by vendors, spend by items, etc.,” said Chapman. “By understanding their spend, clinics can begin to consider where their best opportunities for efficiencies and savings may be. Right now, we’re getting processes in place that will provide a better data set for visibility and planning.”

Building a More Complete Picture

As the organization continues to build out their Envi infrastructure, Chapman notes that efficiencies and
visibility throughout the organization will increase. “As we build out more of our data set in Envi, over time we’ll build more accurate pictures of what each clinic consumes, understand better historical and seasonal perspectives, and whenever we need to, we can run a purchase history for a department or facility. So even though some of the work we’re doing is retrospective, it helps save time in reporting and queries to support overall operations.”

In addition, CVMS is integrating Envi with their accounting system. “We want to be sure we have the GL
code included from the time of purchase, so every time someone places an order for anything from lidocaine to office supplies, we have it coded correctly.”

This will significantly improve our ability to understand, track and manage spend.”

“Envi has been a game changer for the AP team,” Chapman noted. “Previously our staff would have to manually key in data, like invoice data, vendor information, etc., and when you’re manually keying, there’s a risk of errors. With Envi, for the most part we don’t have to rekey, and it’s saving an enormous amount of staff time. We’re also able to produce reports that let us quickly identify any inconsistencies or exceptions.”