From Paper to Digital Human Resources with CHG Healthcare

digital human resources

Who?

CHG Healthcare services was originally founded to enlist the services of traveling physicians as a way to deliver medical care to rural communities. Now, however, CHG specializes in the temporary and permanent placement of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals across the US.

CHG has its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and employs more than 2,000 people in seven offices located around the U.S. They do business in all 50 states and have the broadest offering of healthcare professionals in the industry.

CHG Awarded No. 18 by
FORTUNE Magazine in 2016

The Problem

Easier and More Efficient Doctor Onboarding

To fulfill their mission of providing life-saving healthcare to those who need it most, CHG Healthcare Services needed a faster way to onboard doctors and facilitate locum tenens (that is, the ad hoc appointment of temporary doctors) in hospitals and healthcare facilities around the nation.

As part of its staffing services, CHG works for doctors and healthcare facilities to procure, fill, and finalize hospital privileging forms (that specific medical care permissions) and state license applications, both of which are long and complex documents, often containing state- or institution-specific provisions.

CHG’s previous system relied on paper doctor privileging documents and state licensing forms, which had to be faxed and sent by FedEx, often creating administrative delays and restricting the availability of doctors at crucial moments.

In order to streamline the physician onboarding process, CHG needed a solution that would allow doctors and administrators on the go to edit and share feedback on their documents, sign applications online, and expedite the turnaround of completed forms.

The Solution

PDFfiller’s Document Management Platform

For the past year, CHG has used PDFfiller to accelerate doctor onboarding and to introduce a whole new level of agility and control to the document management workflows involved in hospital staffing. The new system benefits everyone involved including the doctors, the healthcare institutions where they are needed, and the administrators working to oversee the placement process.

After procuring the correct forms, which can range from 80-200 pages, CHG’s team uses PDFfiller’s document editor to pre-fill any available information, saving the doctor valuable time and effort. Using PDFfiller’s annotation tools, administrators can highlight, annotate, or apply sticky notes to areas of the document that require special attention. Once the documents have been filled as much as possible, they are sent to physicians using PDFfiller’s SendToSign feature.

With SendToSign, doctors receive an email on their computer or mobile device that contains a link giving them access to the document inside PDFfiller’s online document editor. From there the doctors can fill in the information that hasn’t already been inputted into the document, edit anything that has been entered incorrectly, and add their own electronic signature. After completion by the physician, the document is instantly returned to the administrator who can check it for errors or missing information, return it for correction, or pass it on to the relevant healthcare facility. A delay or mistake can have significant consequences, delaying the provision of medical care or diverting administrative and medical resources from patients to needless paperwork.

By digitizing document workflow, PDFfiller allows doctors to have access to all necessary documents wherever they happen to be, meaning these documents can be finalized and returned with far greater speed, accuracy, and convenience than paper versions. The range of document management options that PDFfiller offers combined with the speed of working with documents online makes the entire physician onboarding process more efficient, with benefits for everyone involved.

The Benefits of Using PDFfiller

Mobile Access

For CHG, one of the highlights of PDFfiller is its ability to be used anywhere and on any internet-connected device. This allows providers to electronically fill, edit and sign a document from their smartphone anywhere and anytime. According to Angela Grover who works with CHG’s hospital privileging team, “Sometimes we have situations where there is a hospital that needs someone right away and we have patients that can’t be seen because we couldn’t get the documentation back because we had to Fedex it to them and [the doctors] had to Fedex it back to us. The fact that they can sign on their phone and get it back to us the same day is huge for our business and for the number of patients that we serve”.

quotes

The fact that the doctors can sign on their phone and get the documentation back to us the same day is huge for our business and for the number of patients that we serve.

– Angela Grover, CHG’s hospital privileging team

Easy to Use

When working in time-critical situations, it is essential that office software be both powerful and easy to use. Among the document management options that CHG tested, PDFfiller stood out from the competition in terms of user-friendliness from the point of view of both CHG’s administrators and from that of the doctors and healthcare facilities that CHG serves. According to Eric Lindeman, Director of Product Management of the IT Division of CHG, “Our team really like the ease of use by those who we were interfacing with. The doctors enjoyed their user experience, which drove our wanting to adopt it more than others”.

100x Faster Document Turnaround

The fact that doctors can edit, sign, and return forms instantly has meant that document finalization that once took CHG administrators weeks now take a matter of minutes. The implications of getting doctors employed faster extend beyond the positive impacts for the healthcare institutions to the patients themselves. Angela Grover said, “if we are able to narrow a timeline that our providers can finish applications and it helps a hospital to get privileges faster, that means a doctor goes to work at the facility quicker and that the patients in that community are going to be served, versus that physician not being able to get it done and not being able to go and help – it might be a rural area where someone might have to drive two hours to go see a doctor and not having the provider there.”

Security

Because CHG regularly transmits sensitive medical documents, it depends on PDFfiller’s ultra-secure document storage and transmission services to protect its practice and its clients.

PDFfiller uses Amazon’s S3 servers, which have multiple backup locations, instant and uninterrupted data access, and high-level physical security. PDFfiller is also HIPAA compliant, a critical factor for those in the medical field.

PDFfiller’s advanced tools let you take control of your documents and protect your information. An audit trail lets you see whether users have accessed or edited your documents. Notifications allow you to keep track of your account activity.

Secure document deletion means that you can virtually “shred” the documents that you no longer want to keep.

Encrypted folders with two-factor authentication provide an additional level of security for the sensitive documents that you do want to hold on to.

Requirements for authentication of fillers/signers through mobile phone, password, PIN or social ensures that you always know for sure who filled out your form.

CHG branding of PDFfiller documents

PDFfiller looks to its customers to shape the development of its service, meaning that it is constantly evolving to solve real-world document management problems. The creation of customized solutions to address new needs has ranged from the development of document management tools for specific workflows to the creation of branding strategies for more complex corporate structures.

As CHG’s use of PDFfiller extended to a growing number of CHG’s affiliate companies, CHG realized that they had to do more to control the branded appearance of the communications sent out to request doctor feedback. PDFfiller developed a system for a master corporate account that lets companies apply a variety of logos as needed to subaccounts, meaning CHG always has the branding they need.

Customer Support

PDFfiller’s 24/7 customer support means that users like CHG can always rely on PDFfiller to be there whenever they have a problem or need help.

Conclusion

CHG has come to rely on PDFfiller to facilitate fundamental aspects of its workflow and document management. From doctor onboarding and privileging to signing forms and sharing documents, CHG depends on PDFfiller to make sure their document workflow is efficient and medical practices run properly.

PDFfiller combines a high security platform with an easy to use interface and mobile access to ensure that users can annotate, send, and sign documents quickly and easily. This combination of features means that CHG can facilitate document and information exchange securely and effectively. Most importantly, because PDFfiller helps CHG manage their workflow effectively, CHG can help provide proper care to thousands of patients all over the country.

digital human resources

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From Paper to Digital Human Resources with CHG Healthcare