Catholic Health Services

Introduction

Case Study

Healthcare companies are responsible for managing many types of corporate agreements, including contracts with their physicians and caretakers, service providers, equipment vendors, building owners, and others. For organizations that employ hundreds of doctors and nurses and care for thousands of patients across dozens of facilities, it’s easy to see how details of a specific contract could be overlooked or an individual contract could get hung up in the approval process sitting in a stack of papers on an executive’s desk.

Having the appropriate contract management tools in place is critical for any company managing a large volume of corporate documents, but especially so for those companies operating in a heavily regulated industry like healthcare. Missing one deadline or losing track of the status of a single physician agreement simply can’t happen.

ContractWorks gives healthcare companies like Catholic Health Services (CHS) the tools and support they need to easily track their corporate agreements and efficiently route them through the approval process using features like custom alerts and electronic signature.

Overview

About Catholic Health Services

Catholic Health Services of the Archdiocese of Miami is one of the leading Catholic health care providers in South Florida. They provide a full continuum of services, specializing in rehabilitation, long-term care, assisted living, home health care, early education and child care, low-income housing, and hospice for seniors throughout Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.

Operating 38 facilities, they serve over 7,500 people annually with love, skill, compassion and respect for all human dignity – regardless of race, creed or religious affiliation.

Catholic Health Services traditionally operated using manual processes, paper copies of contracts, and wet signatures for approval, but with some changes in company administration came an opportunity to re-evaluate practices and procedures. The new Chief Operating Officer challenged his team to find and implement a better way of managing and approving agreements, but certain criteria had to be met. The contract management software needed to be more cost efficient than their existing tools, it had to include a way of signing and approving contracts electronically to improve efficiency, and it had to be user friendly so their internal stakeholders would actually adopt and use the system.

When CHS found ContractWorks, they found a contract management software partner that could accomplish all of these needs and more.

Challenges

Without adequate software in place to electronically sign and approve contracts, plus some hesitation internally around adopting new technology, CHS had an outdated, inefficient contract management and approval process. Contracts were physically passed from one desk to the next (often getting lost in the process), and every agreement was signed with pen and paper. This process caused unnecessary delays and those responsible for contracts were often left in the dark about the status of a given agreement.

Didn’t have a handle on what was up for automatic renewal, so contracts were renewing without their knowledge.
Contracts were put in a physical file folder and were sent from one inbox to the next. Nobody knew the status of the contract or who had it, resulting in wasted time searching through desks and inboxes to track them down.
Previous administration had some contract management tools in place, but overall was hesitant to adopt technology/digital solutions in the contract management process, so getting buy-in of new any software presented a challenge.
IT department was challenged to look for another platform that was more cost efficient.

Unexpected autorenewals

Lack of insight

Tedious signing process

Hesitant to adopt software

Results

April and the team at CHS are now seeing their contracts flow through the approval process much more quickly thanks to ContractWorks and 10 electronic signature licenses. In fact, they estimate that their approval process time has been cut in half since implementing ContractWorks, and now takes just one week for all parties to sign off on an agreement instead of two. Not only does the electronic signature feature greatly reduce the time it takes for a contract to get approved, but it provides their legal team with visibility into their agreements and processes so they can identify strengths and weaknesses and find potential areas of improvement - and quickly answer any questions that arise about the status of a contract.

Eliminated inefficiencies in the contract approval process and time spent rummaging through desks for contracts.

“Electronic signature has put an end to that. We typically have five approvers for each contract, and I can always see the status of where it is in the process.”

Overcame opposition to changing processes and procedures and implementing new software.

“It took a little while here at the corporate level, but in the long run it has been well received. I’ve noticed that one of our other entities that manages 16 senior housing projects uses ContractWorks to approve invoices in a more efficient way. I’m happy to see that it’s being utilized to move paper more efficiently.”