Annual User Conference July 9-11, 2013

April 2nd, 2013

Plan on joining us for Kreg’s Annual User Conference, July 10-11, 2013, at the Westin in Annapolis, MD. 

Click here for a Conference brochure. During the two day session we will cover system updates and new releases, as well as offer breakout sessions for Budgeting, Cost Accounting, Decision Support and Contract Management.  Both client presentations and Kreg Staff presentations are being planned. Click here to register.

If you would like make a presentation for the group please contact your sales representative or Shane Kreter at (203) 762-2268 or shkreter@kreg.com

What if your contractuals were off 30%?

November 27th, 2012

Many healthcare organizations use the ratio of costs to charges to calculate cost and profitability when making decisions.  This methodology of determining costs, called RCC costing, is inarguably a quick and easy method to determine costs.  Proponents of this approach stress RCC costing provides reasonable results with very little effort. 

But Are the Costs Acceptably Accurate?

Kreg set out to address this question.  What we did is take several instances where Kreg had assisted in the development of unit costs for clients using our RVU based approach.  We then compared the per unit results from Kreg’s methodology to the results obtained from a strict application of RCC costs.

The Results of Our Analysis Are Stunning.

There are huge variations between RCC costs and RVU costs everywhere except one small hospital and a stand alone ASC unit.  Six out of 10 charge items have RCC costs that are within a range of 60% (plus/minus 30%) of the RVU based costs.  If your contractuals are plus/minus 30% is that acceptable?  In fact, in the study we found many items were over 1,000% off.  Unfortunately since there is simply no consistent underlying relationship between costs and charges, you can’t reliably use RCCs to determine charge item costs.

 What’s a Healthcare Organization to Do?

As mentioned in a recent HFM article “as hospitals move toward pay-for-performance and other quality-based payments systems, it is essential they have access to accurate, reliable and actionable cost accounting information”.  We know this should be the goal of every healthcare organization in the country, but how you actually achieve it is the problem.  Each organization has different priorities, IT infrastructure, staffing and internal accounting limitations that impact the development of accurate and defensible costs for 100% of the items in their charge masters. 

 Kreg’s “Reality Based Cost Accounting Approach”.

Our clients develop organizational specific RVUs and update their costs quarterly, semi-annually or annually.  We have clients ranging in size from multi-hospital systems to critical access hospitals.  We have clients that feed the cost accounting data into our Decision Support Reporting system to then analyze the profitability of product lines, physicians and contracts and others feeding the costs into their data repositories.  The bottom line is Kreg will help you customize the system and the process based on the realities your organization faces.  We can even outsource the entire process for you.

 You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure.

The reality is you can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is an old management adage that is just as applicable today.  You can’t manage for improvement if you don’t measure to see what’s getting better and what isn’t.  Click here   for a PDF copy of our RCC analysis.

Management Control Systems V5.02 Released

August 14th, 2012

Kreg is pleased to announce the release of V5.02 of our Management Control Systems (BUD, PAY, REV, MCA, CAP and Report Blaster). This release includes the ability to apply Conditional Formatting features from Excel 2007/2010 to your Kreg ReportWriter results. This functionality allows you to highlight variance information in reports using stoplights, other icons, or color shading variance cells. 

The example below demonstrates the capabilities of Conditional Formatting. In this example, a monthly variance report has Conditional Formatting applied to the Year-to-Date variance percent column. The Conditional Formatting is represented by stoplights where green indicates the variance is within acceptable user criteria, yellow means the variance is close to exceeding the user criteria and red exceeds the user variance criteria and intervention is required.  You define the criteria for the variances within each Report Writer report, and the criteria can be diferent from report to report.

The requirements to use Conditional Formatting and other new features and benefits of this release include: 

• Currently running the Enhanced Report Writer in Version 5.01 of  Kreg’s Budgeting software released in the spring of 2011; and,
• All users must be running Excel 2007 or 2010 to produce or view the formatted reports.

 (Please note Microsoft stopped supporting Excel 2003 in April 2010.) 

  Other new and notable features included in this release are: 

• Improvements to the installation process;
• File Buffering On/Off Tool added to Security;
• Changes to Account Group editing in the Chart of Accounts;
• Group IDs display alphabetically –regardless of case;
• Users can access/run other user’s tasks/jobs;
• Type T in Report Writer – allows text to be placed in a specific cell
• Report writer <cp> can be used in calculation statements in report writer; and,
• New MCA reports across selected centers added to the menu.

 This release is available now and will automatically be sent to all existing version 5.01 clients. Training will be offered via group WebEx sessions.  System documentation will be provided containing additional reference material. WebEx training sessions will be held: 

• September 6, 2012 from 10:00 -11:30 AM
• September 11, 2012 from 1:00 – 2:30 PM

You can sign up by clicking here.

Net Revenue Trend Analysis

December 1st, 2011

A Kreg client recently attended an HFMA conference and asked a panel of hospital financial people how they tracked changes in net revenue from year to year. Most panelists admitted they see the totals only on the institution wide P&L’s where they see a variance in total net revenue from the previous year.

Kreg clients can easily extract more detail than this from EV-CMA, our Contract Management System. The report below can be constructed in the EV-CMA Report Writer. You build custom calculated fields to isolate and compare Cases, Charges, and Expected Payments (Net Revenue) from year to year. Not only does it present variances, it presents the information at the contract/clause level of detail. This way clients can identify variances in specific lines of business.

Click on the report to view the entire image

2010-2011 Net Revenue Trend by Contract Clause

Kreg Offers Five Ways to Deploy Solutions

October 26th, 2011

Every healthcare provider has different needs and staffing capabilities that impact how they implement and use their Cost Accounting/Decision Support and Contract Management solutions. Clients rely on these systems to analyze the cost, profitability and resource utilization of Product Lines, DRGs, Physicians, Managed Care Contracts, etc. They also use them for recovering underpayments from managed care payers and negotiating more favorable contract terms and conditions with their payers.

 Kreg can deploy its systems in the following five ways:

• On-Site Client Server Based. The physical server is located at the client site and is part of the client’s network. Multiple users access the Kreg systems on a daily basis over the local network.
• On-Site Client Server on VMWare Server. The Kreg systems are implemented in a VMWare virtual machine located at the client site and is part of the client’s network. Multiple users access the Kreg systems on a daily basis over the local network.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) – No server is located at the client site. The client operates the Kreg systems using a web-browser via a secure internet connection. The software resides on a VMWare Services virtual machine located at the Kreg data center in Atlanta, GA. Under this option Kreg provides all software and hardware.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) II. - No server is located at the client site. The client operates the Kreg systems using a web-browser via a secure internet connection to a physical server provided by the client, but housed at the Kreg data center in Atlanta, GA.
• Monthly Report Package – This option is primarily for organizations that do not have the staff to operate the Kreg systems on a daily basis, but need the information to manage their operations. Kreg sets up and imports data on a monthly basis, then provides a customized report set that meets the ongoing needs of the client.  Kreg will also spend up to two hours per month with senior management “drilling through” the data and generating reports for specific projects.

 If you are interested in discussing any of these options, please email us at info@kreg.com.