Hunter Laboratories
Campbell , California
Customer Profile:
Hunter Laboratories is the largest locally owned and operated clinical reference laboratory in northern California. Hunter operates 29 Patient Service Centers and is contracted with over 200 insurance companies. Over 99% of all tests ordered are performed at Hunter’s state-of-the-art laboratory. With over 100 years of laboratory experience, the management and pathology group of Hunter are fully committed to its mission statement: Consistently Delivering the Best Service in the Clinical Laboratory Industry.
Healthcare Interfacing Challenges:
The clinical reference laboratory market is very competitive. Innovation is a requirement to gain new relationships with physicians and clinics.
- Physicians are moving aggressively to paperless processes, especially with the rising number of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system
implementations.
- Physicians and clinics want lab results to be communicated electronically into the patient records of their EMR system. Having a rapid interface
capability is a big strategic advantage in the marketplace.
- Developing and implementing interfaces through laboratory system application vendors is often too costly, and the timing of the implementation is
dependent upon the vendor’s availability. Delivering quickly is sometimes one of the most valuable competitive advantages for a lab.
- Fixing interface issues also rested with the laboratory application system vendors. Resolving interface issues can result in long wait times.
Customer Solution:
Implemented NeoIntegrate™, a new generation healthcare communications engine. NeoIntegrate initially enabled application interfaces for the
following:
- Seacoast Laboratory Data Systems (laboratory information system), and several EMRs, including, A4 (Allscripts), and SpringCharts.
- Elysium (Axolotl) Santa Cruz County Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO).
- i2i MediTracks (chronic disease and health management system RHIO utilized in several Northern California counties).
- Reference laboratories for outsourced services.
NeoIntegrate: - Enabled Hunter Laboratories to commit to a 2-week delivery of implementing an interface to a clinic’s EMR, creating a strategic competitive
advantage and opening new business opportunities
- Provided significant cost controls by dramatically shortening the cycle time to build and implement interfaces (from 6-to-12 months to 2-to-
4 weeks)
- Shifted the control related to the timing of interface delivery to the lab, accelerating the cycle time
- Shifted the control of supporting interfaces to the lab, resulting in improved customer service
- Implemented a healthcare integration platform on which to participate in RHIOs simply and effectively
Hunter Laboratories Insights:
Chris Riedel, CEO , is a clinical laboratory industry veteran and leads the successful growth of Hunter Laboratories in a very competitive market. Chris’ insights:
“Hunter’s mission is to consistently deliver the best service in the clinical laboratory industry. We build our laboratory operations around this mission. As part of this constant effort, one of our objectives was to create a strategic competitive advantage around developing the ability to deliver interfaces quickly and accurately to our physicians and clinics. We believe this capability provides significant advantages in attracting and building long term relationships with new clients.
Early in our interface engine evaluation process, another laboratory suggested that we consider NeoTool as one of our options. After our detailed evaluation process, NeoTool was our choice. We had been badly burned on two occasions by IT vendors over promising their capabilities, so we were cautious in our evaluation. The NeoTool interface engine and customer support have exceeded our expectations in every way.
The initial implementation of the NeoIntegrate integration platform went very smoothly. The NeoTool team understands the details of healthcare interfacing and quickly resolves any issue. Their customer service has been magnificent. Hunter Labs now has a simple solution to interfacing with various clinical applications.
NeoTool has enabled Hunter Laboratories to gain new clinics as clients, strengthen clinic relationships, and participate productively with the growing presence of RHIOs.
With NeoTool’s interface engine, we can, with 100% confidence, offer a two-week interface guarantee if the EMR vendor will simply provide their specifications and provide minimum cooperation. Without cooperation, no matter what your EMR, we can build and deploy an interface within four weeks. Clinics sometimes express their surprise about the quick turnaround, but we have delivered on this promise. The interfacing results are achieved through NeoTool’s point-and-click, simplified approach to healthcare integration.
Prior to NeoTool, building interfaces from our laboratory system was a 1 – 3 month process because we had to rely on multiple parties for the delivery of each interface. The NeoTool interface engine enabled us to leverage the work completed for previous interfaces, thereby dramatically decreasing our deployment time while also reducing considerably our costs. This is a win-win value proposition for us.
NeoTool also makes Hunter more competitive by giving us the ability to provide the electronic delivery of anatomic pathology and cytology results – an advantage over many of our competitors who can only transmit clinical testing results. Clinics often find that by submitting their orders electronically, they experience a reduction in errors on patient information (e.g., name, birth date, etc.). The cost savings they experience by not having to research and match patient information goes straight to their bottom line.
The return on our NeoTool investment has been exceptionally positive. We have established new relationships with several clinics and believe our interface capability will help ensure these clinics are long-term clients. We know that we have been successful in our interfacing approach because physicians who experience our service in one clinic are now requesting it in the other clinics in which they practice.
At Hunter, our clients expect superior customer support and we expect the same from the vendors who support our efforts. We are achieving our strategic direction with the help of our partners like NeoTool.”
About NeoIntgrate
NeoIntegrate supports the full life-cycle on healthcare interface development. Learn more about NeoIntegrate.
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