In an industry dedicated to providing quality patient care, it’s important for Home Medical Equipment (HME) companies to rely on logistics management for an efficient delivery process.
Since 1957, SurfMed has been committed to meeting the needs of its patients by supplying dependable HME products and services. For years, the company was bogged down by paper-based systems and insufficient routing software, making delivering materials costly and ineffective. With minimal accountability for errors, these manual processes resulted in missing delivery tickets, billing delays and unexplained overtime hours.
In an effort to elevate its enterprise capability to a well-defined and manageable business model, while optimizing all available technologies and resources, SurfMed in July 2016 turned to Apacheta, a mobile business provider.
Since implementation, SurfMed has witnessed significant growth, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in its overall operational efficiency. The company has customized key elements of Apacheta’s software to best suit its workflow and reporting needs. The personalization of the applications has allowed SurfMed to use the software in unique ways, such as eliminating unnecessary phone and email traffic, automating delivery notifications for patients who authorize door drops and streamlining the coordination of patient care with ancillary providers.
“As our business needs evolve or one-off exceptions occur, we have been able to easily adjust our platform setup and internal workflows,” says Alexis Watine, Chief Enterprise Administrator and Compliance Officer of SurfMed. “All departments have been positively impacted by the introduction of Apacheta in one way or another and we look forward to the continued efforts put forth towards the overall goal of healthcare interoperability.”
By automating its daily processes, such as obtaining patient signatures and billing paperwork, to a mobile solution, over a six-month period SurfMed has experienced a 100% elimination of missing delivery tickets, a 97% reduction in the frequency of incomplete forms and a 75% decrease in costs associated with printing materials.
Advanced route planning has also helped alleviate the amount of overtime hours for delivery technicians by 10%, and lessened the average drivers time spent in transit by 45 minutes. SurfMed has also improved the consistency of their cash flow by decreasing the number of days sales outstanding (DSO) for hand-delivered orders by 20 days.
“Between the elegantly designed platform, highly user-friendly interface and a development team dedicated to crafting a truly innovative solution, Apacheta has an exceptional product,” says Watine. “Our only regret is that we did not implement it sooner.”
“Paper-based operations are outdated, unreliable and can lead to a disorganized chaos for HME providers. Chasing paper trails and misplacing order forms or delivery tickets resulted in higher expenses, reduced cash flow while creating a significant amount of overtime hours that cost a company countless dollars,” said Gregg Timmons, CEO of Apacheta. “SurfMed desperately needed to move away from the manual processing and integrate technology into their daily workflow. By installing our mobile logistics solutions into SurfMed’s Brightree business management system, the company is now more productive and has fewer wasted expenses. Additionally, SurfMed now has a leg up on its competition, as mobile logistics solutions are gaining momentum throughout the industry and early adopters are leaving traditionalists in the dust.”
