StoneRidge Retirement Living Community uses Hybrent to eliminate duplicate tasks, seamlessly track inventory and charge products to patients. Reducing time spent on these tasks all for staff to spend more time where it counts- caring for residents.
StoneRidge Retirement Living Community has four communities in three locations in south-central Pennsylvania. Each location has unique qualities but they all aim to focus on personalized care for each resident. The four locations offer different levels of long-term care ranging from independent living and personal care to more attentive care options with skilled nursing and memory care. Two of the locations also offer short-term rehabilitation options, ensuring all residents are receiving the right type of care for them.
In order to keep resident care at the center of their operations, StoneRidge needed a system to ensure the staff was spending their time efficiently and their money was being spent in an effective manner – that is where Hybrent came in.
Challenges
Like many healthcare facilities, StoneRidge did not have one central inventory location, but rather separate inventory and purchasing powers at each facility. This led to each community purchasing many different types of products to provide basically the same type of care. Because there were so many different items being ordered, they were not getting the best pricing on products. Making matters worse, each facility tracked supplies differently. One facility tracked supplies using software, while another facility manually tracked items on Excel spreadsheets.
Facility Financial Managers for StoneRidge, Damian Fisher and Alexis Roach, along with Senior Leadership, knew there were inefficiencies in the overall supply chain of their facilities. “It didn’t make sense for all the locations to use different supplies. It wasn’t effective or efficient and it was wasteful,” Damian explained.
“The communities were over-ordering and then things would expire and have to be thrown out,” Alexis agreed.
When the pandemic started, StoneRidge started to stock up on PPE. At one point – to ensure they wouldn’t run out – they had over $100,000 worth of supplies on hand at the central inventory location that they needed to distribute to the individual communities. The Excel spreadsheets they were using were not the best way to keep up with the allocation process.
Staff was also responsible for manually updating resident supply usage in the EMR. They tracked daily resident charges on pieces of paper and at the end of the month would compile those papers and manually enter all the charges into the system. This process left lots of room for error as staff could easily miss entries, lose papers or completely forget to track the items needed to be charged, not to mention time this tedious task would take. These errors not only led to inaccurate data but lost revenue for StoneRidge. Additionally, the duplicate task took the staff members away from their primary duties of providing resident care.
Solution
StoneRidge’s team wanted to standardize the products they ordered, eliminate manual tasks, have better control over their inventory and gain more insights into the organization’s supply chain spend. They also wanted a system that could integrate with their EMR, MatrixCare, so resident charges were automatically updated. Hybrent checked all of their boxes.
“The inventory management system helped us get organized and see what each community was using and establish a standard set of products. Now we’re able to choose what we want to be used at the communities rather than it being an ordering free-for-all at each of the locations,” said Alexis. “We wanted to reduce the number of types of supplies at all the communities and create a standard set of supplies to use throughout all the communities.”
Hybrent also allowed them to create a central inventory location where all supplies are shipped to and then passed out to the appropriate locations. StoneRidge utilized par levels in Hybrent for each of their facilities and the central inventory location. The central inventory location is stocked with 3 months worth of supplies that they use to replenish each community on a weekly basis, keeping the individual facilities stocked with one month’s worth of supplies at all times. Hybrent’s Par Level Report has assisted the organization with purchasing inventory for the central location and informs staff about which products they need to send on the weekly supply drops to each community.
StoneRidge has also automated the charge capture process, making it as easy and fast as possible for their staff to charge products to patients when used. “We created mini cashier kiosks in each inventory room, similar to the ones you would see shopping in a self-check-out line at a store. There’s a computer with a barcode scanner and staff can walk into the room, scan out the products per resident,” explained Damian.
Thanks to the simple nature of the scanning feature and the streamlined kiosk approach, Damian and Alexis found training the clinical staff to be easy. When they first adopted Hybrent, they each became familiar with the system so they could train others. “We used the Help Center and the Show Me How training modules in Hybrent to fully understand the platform. We became experts on the software and aren’t afraid to try something new, knowing that we could fix it ourselves,” Damian explained.
“I created a guide that details step-by-step instructions on how to scan out a product to a resident and put one in every inventory room. We found that really has helped the nurses,” said Alexis. The staff came up to speed very quickly thanks to Alexis and Damian.
Hybrents integration with MatrixCare has also saved the staff at StoneRidge from having to manually update resident information in two systems. When information is entered into MatrixCare, the information syncs in Hybrent automatically and eliminates the need for the duplicate tasks.
Results
The adoption of Hybrent has resulted in reduced costs, time saved and secured revenue for StoneRidge Retirement Living Communities.
Standardizing the purchasing process and supplies locations can purchase has given them greater control over supply costs, and thanks to the inventory management system, reduced waste from over-ordering or expired products. The charge capture feature has streamlined tracking resident costs – no more manual processes or lost revenue due to missing information.
“If an inventory account is off at a location, we’re able to look in the history to see if someone scanned out the wrong quantity, did an adjustment or forgot to charge the resident for the supplies,” said Damian.
Hybrent also provides reports that allow Alexis and Damian to gain better insight as to the financial health and inventory of their entire organization. Making use of the billing, par level, real-time inventory and inventory transfer reports helps them watch their costs more closely. Being able to analyze purchasing and usage patterns has allowed them both to make more informed strategic decisions regarding their supply chain.
Using Hybrent has given StoneRidge more control over its inventory and purchasing process than ever before. It has reduced supply spend by reducing wasteful over-ordering and managing supply costs more efficiently. By simplifying the purchasing and charge capture process, the team can get back to their main goal: focusing on patient care.