Challenge

• RehabCare Group, the leading provider of physical rehabilitation program management in over 1,200 healthcare facilities throughout the United States, needed to automate its patient prescreening process.
• To shorten referral response times the company CEO asked IT to eliminate the use of paper forms and reduce the average patient prescreening time from 5 hours to 1 hour--while ensuring accuracy and compliance with strict healthcare reimbursement policies.
• Patient-facing employees who work remotely at healthcare facilities required mobile access to data.
• RehabCare also wanted to replace an on-premise Sage SalesLogix system used by sales with a cloud-based solution to reduce maintenance and infrastructure costs.

Solution

• After attending a Dreamforce user conference, the CIO of RehabCare told his developers about the Force.com platform. A .NET developer at the company downloaded the free Force.com toolkit and built a mobile patient prescreening application—without training—on the Force.com platform in just 4 days.
• RehabCare deployed the application on 400 Apple iPhones with Salesforce CRM's mobile access, replacing the 7-page paper form formerly used to pre-screen patients. Watch video.
• Employees located in healthcare facilities use the iPhones and mobile access to capture patient information. Vital information is always available even without wireless connectivity because Salesforce CRM works online and offline.
• Completed forms automatically trigger Force.com workflows, including emails to medical directors who review and approve patient referrals. Reminder emails for approvals are automatically triggered as the 1-hour deadline approaches.
• RehabCare replaced its Sage SalesLogix system with Salesforce CRM at the request of its sales people. The company deployed Salesforce CRM Unlimited Edition in less than 30 days with help from salesforce.com consulting partner Appirio.

Results

• With Salesforce CRM's mobile access, the company reduced the amount of time it takes to prescreen a patient by 60%;, resulting in a 150%; increase in productivity.
• By building its mobile application on Force.com instead of in .NET, RehabCare cut development time from 3 months to just 4 days.
• The entire company has embraced Salesforce CRM. The cloud-computing model eliminates maintenance and additional infrastructure costs.
• RehabCare responds to the majority of referrals within its 1 hour timeframe.
• Salesforce CRM’s authentication, authorization, and encryption functionalities ensure the protection of patient health information, so there are no concerns around unauthorized access of information.