Simpler Medicaid Billing

With Frontline, nurses can capture more services and document care more accurately. Rather than keeping detailed notes only for students who are on Medicaid, nurses keep records for all students they see, and Angela handles the billing through the system. “We just took that off their plate. They weren’t having to worry about it, yet we were still capturing more students.”

Angela says now that Medicaid billing is no longer done on paper, she can reallocate staff. “Before we had the electronic health record and we were paper billing, that had to go through about three different people. Instead of using nurses to do that, as we grew, I was able to put those positions back in a school as a school nurse and not have to use them for a Medicaid person.”

Immunization Tracking and More

The benefits of a digital system for health records extend beyond Medicaid. “Our nurses were spending a great amount of time on immunizations, keeping paper copies and tickler files of what was due when,” says Angela. “When we realized with electronic health records you could pull a report and see who was delinquent, that was such a time saver for them as well.”

When Angela needs to distribute new emergency care plans, she uses Frontline for that as well, uploading them into the care plan area of the system. Nurses can immediately print them out and distribute them to teachers throughout the district, helping them to keep students with diabetes and other conditions safe.

Reporting Data

Angela uses the reporting capabilities in Frontline School Health Management in numerous ways. At the top of her list is the data it provides to help her justify requests for additional nurses. Recently, at the smallest high school in the district, Angela saw that the school’s only nurse distributed 24 daily medications between the hours of 11am and 1pm, leaving no time for anything else. The data helped Angela (successfully) support her request for a second nurse in the school.

Principals also love the data that the system enables Angela to provide. They often request quarterly reports to see which students spend the most time in the health room. “When we’re able to pull that and see that Johnny has, in the first nine weeks, been to the health room 20 times, and you’re sitting in a room with a team and the assistant principal says, ‘Wait a minute, Johnny has also come in late 15 times,’ and then another person says, ‘He’s also been written up four times,’ all of a sudden you start putting all that together and you realize there’s more going on with that student than just asking to go to the health room. It’s great to be able to pull all of that and work together as a team to see what’s going on with the student.”

Angela can also pull reports for the Special Ed department and other teams who might need them. “To be able to pull things for special ed, vision and hearing screenings, treatments, procedures, that has been great as well. We share a lot of reports across the different disciplines in the district.” She has even used the system to pull reports needed for court cases and says that it gives nurses peace of mind knowing that the records are available to show how, when, and why a student was provided with care.

Access from Anywhere

The ability to access Frontline from anywhere helps Angela respond to unusual situations. If late in the evening Angela hears that there is a suspected measles case at one of the schools, she can quickly log in and see if any students aren’t immunized, then call and ask them to stay home. “Just having that data at your fingertips helps tremendously.”

Should district operations be disrupted in some way, students will still need care. “If we ever had to leave our campus, if we had to relocate because of a catastrophe or anything like that, all I’ll have to do is pick up my laptop and I can log into Frontline from anywhere and still carry on business as usual. That is a great benefit, and it puts a lot of peace of mind to know that you can carry that with you.”

Justifying the Cost to District Leadership

Angela says that sometimes the district asks if the system is still worth it. “Usually, I’m able to go back and discuss the history of why we went with [Frontline] for our Medicaid billing. And when you look at the amount we bill, it far outweighs the cost.”

When pushed, she has explored other possible options. “All systems look great when they’re selling it. But when you know the questions to ask and you start taking that deep dive into it, so far nothing has been able to give us all the features that Frontline has given us and to be able to pull those reports.”

Some districts have tried other options. “I know a lot of districts have tried to develop their own thing. They’re putting things in a spreadsheet or in Google Forms and things like that to save the cost of having the electronic health record and it never works. They always end up going back to the electronic health record.”

An EHR System to Trust

For Angela, it comes down to reliability and ease of use for her nurses. “I think the heart of this program is to be able to offer my nurses a system that can provide concise and precise documentation that they feel comfortable with and that the district feels confident with. We are able to pull data, pull reports, at the drop of a hat.”