For physicians, the depth of partnership with their technology provider could very well determine their practice success. Greenway Health never forgets that.
Today, medical practices are becoming increasingly reliant on software and technology-enabled services, and there is also a complex shift happening from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursements. This shift is pushing practices to take even bolder steps to transform and achieve new levels of success. Amid the distraction of all this transformation, physicians are aware of the importance of enhancing patient relationships.
Scott Zimmerman, CEO of Greenway Health, believes there’s another relationship in which trust is just as important: the clinician-technology vendor relationship. With so much change hitting practices and physicians, it’s technology adoption to survive and thrive.
Zimmerman believes healthcare is about caring for patients — but who’s caring for caregivers? That’s Greenway’s job. At Greenway, relationships involve listening, collaborating, and supporting customers and for the challenges they navigate on a daily basis because in today’s healthcare environment, no one can go at it alone.
Greenway, a market leader in the U.S. healthcare space for more than 40 years, provides software and services to ambulatory practices so physicians and their office staff can create capable practices, and care for their patients.
Today, Greenway continues that tradition by introducing products that balance what’s required to practice medicine with the emerging future of value-based care — the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) and its Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs).
“The change to value-based care represents the most dramatic challenge for physicians and their teams to date,” Zimmerman said. “Our job is to guide customers through an organizational transformation, allowing them to achieve a new level of success by removing the barriers between them, patients, and the delivery of care.
Leadership and Trust
Zimmerman has been CEO of Greenway since 2016. Previously he served as president of TeleVox Software Inc. He brought with him extensive business leadership experience in global healthcare technology, having also served at companies such as Merck, Boston Scientific, and GE Healthcare.
At Greenway, Zimmerman looked inward, learning how teams and departments collaborated in service to customers. After creating an environment where challenges and increased opportunities could be shared openly, he and his team began breaking down silos that held the company back. New conversations emerging focused on creating exceptional experiences for team members as well as customers. These new conversations are sparkling in more imagination and innovation. Two major initiatives resulted, both aimed at ultimately improving Greenway’s role as a trusted advisor to practices.
In October 2017, the company announced a major investment in developing a next-generation platform. Called Project Polaris, the initiative will take 18-24 months. To further support customers and increase its development efforts, Greenway also unified operations by consolidating business functions to its Tampa headquarters.
“Bringing teams together is a bold step that prioritizes caring for our customers and their patients by creating a more unified, collaborative organization, further unlocking the innovation and speed necessary to achieve our larger potential to improve lives,” Zimmerman said.
Project Polaris: A brighter future
Greenway believes Project Polaris represents a large part of that potential to improve lives. It will combine the best attributes from the company’s existing flagship solutions to help providers more successfully leverage a value-based healthcare environment for greater success.
Greenway recently partnered with a user experience company to observe customers at work and in their own environments, uncovering previously hidden opportunities to better design and enhance solutions.
“Through these investments to better understand our customers’ work, we’ve identified common challenges to quality care, including complex insurance verification, real-time access to data, data entry and billing inaccuracies, and patient engagement,” Zimmerman said. “Now that we have a deeper understanding of our customers pain points, we are more clear how to solve them with our technology.”
Project Polaris is also being developed with the help of a customer advisory board and customer feedback. The initiative is a prime example of how Greenway has made listening a top priority.
“We do an incredible amount of listening to both employees and customers,” Zimmerman said. “That listening and ongoing dialogue is vital as we aim to better understand physician barriers and identify unique ways to expand possibilities for our practices.”
Greenway contributes to that success by focusing on three areas:
- Inspiring practice transformation. “Incremental change today will not be enough to thrive in value-based healthcare,” Zimmerman said. “To be successful, physicians will require a profound change in orientation to take their practices to a new level of effectiveness — this is the very definition of transformation.”
- Designing for delight. A phrase Zimmerman uses often to describe Project Polaris and the process of creating tools that work the way physicians work. “We want to reinvent how physicians do their work so they can stay focused on what matters most — caring for patients,” he said.
- Restoring the care in healthcare. Greenway is passionate about caring for caregivers — what is called the “Fourth Aim.” He tacks this on to the commonly referenced Triple Aim: improving the patient experience, improving the health of populations, and reducing costs.
“Maintaining work-life balance, resolving on-the-job stresses, avoiding burnout — these are vital issues for caregivers, and we’re addressing them through the solutions and services we design and deliver,” Zimmerman said.
Comprehensive solutions and services
One of today’s biggest sources of stress for physicians is navigating value-based care. Zimmerman often tells physicians, “After all the promises and good intentions, only one thing matters: your results in comparison to your peers.”
Greenway’s comprehensive suite of solutions offers peace of mind by allowing physicians to participate in value-based care programs while also focusing on patients. Customers are supported by technology certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), as well as dedicated support and services teams and superior training. “Our customers want to use tools, guidance, and services that are proven and lead the way to better care,” Zimmerman said.
Recently, Greenway’s revenue cycle management solution was named the 2018 top-ranked KLAS Category Leader for Ambulatory Revenue Cycle Management Services. A full 100 percent of Greenway customers surveyed by KLAS, an impartial healthcare IT data and insights company, described Greenway Revenue Services as “a true business partner with above average quality of guidance.”
Additionally, Greenway Care Coordination Services, Greenway Patient Portal, and Greenway Patient Messaging — crucial tools for engaging with patients and keeping them healthier longer — have been enhanced to create a seamless approach to healthcare technology when combined with other Greenway solutions.
In all, more than 100 million patient lives are touched by physicians and other healthcare providers using Greenway solutions.
