Video Spotlight (transcript): Christus Physician Group

I’m Bob Karl, Chief Financial Officer of Christus Physician Group.

Christus Health is an international, Catholic, not-for-profit health care system. We have operations in the United States, Chile, Columbia and Mexico. We have over 40,000 employees. We were founded in the late 1880’s by the sisters of charity of the incarnate word, who came to Texas to Galveston, from France and founded the first hospital in Texas. Christus Physician Group is a multi-state multi-specialty physician group. We have operations in the states of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. We operate 75 clinics and have over 750 employees.

In my role as CFO at Christus physician group, I oversee the accounting and finance operations, as well as physician compensation and IT services. At the end of the day, my job is to make sure we use our money wisely.

Before Epion, we experienced many inefficiencies … both for the patients and our staff. There was a lot of paper work, there was duplicate paper work, there were errors in entering the papers into our electronic medical record.

After extensive research, we decided to pilot two digital check-in products. After the pilots, Epion was the clear choice. We chose Epion because of its deep integration with Athena. There knowledge of Athena clinicals, there knowledge of the clinical work flow, made them the clear winner between the two choices.

Additionally, Epion was very responsive. They met our needs. They hit timelines and deadlines every time. They were a true partner at the table with us. The response from our practices since implementing Epion has been phenomenal. The reduction of paper work has been unbelievable.

At Christus physician group, we have a very diverse population, both economically, as well as their experience with technology and at the end of the day our patients love the Epion digital platform. Over 92% of them are either satisfied of very satisfied with their experience.

At Epion they truly listen to their customers feedback. They are always adding new features based on customer feedback. Examples include fall and depression screeners and insurance card capture. I would tell others considering Epion, that they are a true partner. They’re a well run organization with a great team. They’re knowledge of Athena clinicals is very impressive They have demonstrated a high return on investment for us. Since implementing Epion we have seen nearly a 3.5% increase in our collections per encounter. That alone is a five time return on investment.

One of our organizational goals was to increase outstanding collections at time of service. Since implementing Epion, we’ve have seen nearly a 100% increase. Other benefits we realized include a 600% improvement in the email capture rate of our patients. Additionally, our patients have singed up for our Athena portal, at a rate that’s 300% greater. Our staff has been freed up to focus on patient care instead of paperwork. And our front desk staff are more productive.

Our clinical Staff have been freed up to focus on providing a more meaningful patient experience. Additional benefits that we’ve realized since implementing the Epion digital platform include over 53,000 signed consent documents. And over 21,000 of our patients have signed up for text messages. Once the decision was made to go with Epion, we were able to rapidly roll out the product across the rest of our practice within 6 months.

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