Talbert Medical Group

Summary:
California-based Talbert Medical Group is a physician-owned primary-care medical group. The company maintains its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and operates nine clinics in the region.

To manage its accounting, the company used a hosted service from SAP. But high costs and a lack of effective reporting—combined with the fact that the service was being phased out—led the group to seek a new accounting solution. Talbert Medical Group turned to Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner, Technology Management Consultants (TMC), for help. Together, they deployed Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains to replace the old system. As a result of the switch, the company has gained a highly effective solution it can host internally, improved its reporting, and streamlined its business processes.

Situation:
With headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Talbert Medical Group is a physician-owned primary care and multispecialty medical group that serves nine locations across the Los Angeles and Orange counties of California. The company has been in existence for more than 30 years.

Its nine clinics vary in size from 200 physicians to 10. Each of these clinics submits detailed data to the corporate office every month, including number of patients and their related health insurance claims. Doctor salaries are based on the annual total of the insurance claims, which can fluctuate by thousands of dollars each month. In addition, the corporate headquarters maintains relationships with its suppliers by issuing purchase orders for equipment. To manage these activities, the Accounting department used an SAP solution hosted by a third party. But at approximately U.S.$400 per person every month—and a total of ten purchasing agents—the hosted solution was extremely expensive, totaling $4,000 dollars a month just to use the service.

When the solution provider announced that it was ending its hosted SAP plan, Talbert Medical Group knew it needed to find another solution to manage its accounts. At the same time, the group identified some key requirements of the new solution. First of all, it wanted a package it could host internally to reduce costs. Second, it needed to be able to generate more detailed reports that they could then send to the outlying clinics. Third, the company needed a solution that would integrate with the Microsoft Excel 2000 spreadsheets it already used. And, perhaps most importantly, it required a solution that could be deployed and fully functional within three months—the deadline for migrating off the old solution.

Solution:
Talbert Medical Group already knew the perfect solution: Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains. According to Michael Gamm, Chief Financial Office for Talbert Medical Group, “We wanted a Microsoft solution to integrate with our existing Microsoft infrastructure, and Great Plains was competitive on pricing and offered the features we needed.” Once the decision was made, the company turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Technology Management Consultants (TMC) for help.

Working with TMC, the company deployed Microsoft Great Plains in a three-month time period. The solution also uses the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database solution to store its data; this has provided Talbert Medical Group with an end-to-end solution that can be hosted and maintained internally.

Today, the 10-person accounting team uses Microsoft Great Plains for all its accounting needs. After physicians submit their reports and data—often using Excel 2000 spreadsheets—the information is automatically imported into the Microsoft Great Plains solution. In addition, the company is using Microsoft Business Solutions for Analytics–FRx® to generate detailed reporting.

Benefits:
Because of the high cost of the hosted SAP solution, switching to Microsoft Great Plains was an economical alternative. And in addition to Talbert Medical Group being able to realize a return on investment in one and a half years, the benefits far exceed the initial return on investment.

Deployed the New Solution in Three Months
For Talbert Medical Group, one of the big successes of the new solution was that it was able to port all existing data and start using Microsoft Great Plains within three months—the timeframe it had before the hosted service went down. “Microsoft Great Plains was easy for us to deploy and customize to our business needs,” says Gamm. “The implementation was very fast.”

Gained a Less Expensive, but Robust Accounting Solution
Talbert Medical Group is very pleased with the features found within Microsoft Great Plains—and has determined that the solution is as functional as the previous hosted SAP service, if not more. At the same time, the cost is a fraction of what the company was paying before. “Microsoft Great Plains was the perfect solution for us moving forward,” says Gamm.

Improved Reporting
Under the old solution, any time members of the accounting team wanted to run a report, they had to re-enter the information into a spreadsheet—a process that was so cumbersome and wasted so much time that the team ran only reports that were critical to the operation of the business. Using FRx, however, the company is now able to run reports quickly and easily—and each individual clinic can view reports on a monthly basis. “One of the appealing features of Microsoft Great Plains was that it is easier to generate reports than it was with SAP,” says Gamm. “With FRx, we can send an update to the clinics, and they can drill down to get the information they need.”

Furthermore, reporting is now generated automatically. As a result, the data is up-to-date, ensuring timely reports that reflect the current state of the business. In addition, the company now has the ability to run ad hoc reports. “With Microsoft Great Plains, reporting is amazingly available and accurate,” says Gamm. “The reporting capability of FRx is more flexible than any other software solutions out there.”

Automated Purchase Orders
In the past, purchase orders had to be created and tracked manually—again using spreadsheets. This was a process that wasted a lot of time and was prone to error. Microsoft Great Plains has automated the creation and management of purchase orders. “Previously, all the purchase order logs were kept manually,” says Gamm. “With Microsoft Great Plains, they’ve all been automated.”

Automating purchase orders has also reduced the amount of paper the company now uses—which has reduced the administration associated with managing many paper files.

Set a Platform for Future Growth
By implementing a solution based on Microsoft technology, Talbert Medical Group is poised for future growth. Although the company has not yet fully deployed all the modules it plans to, it now has a solid platform on which to grow. For example, the company uses a program, Epic, to manage its patient billing—and is thinking about integrating Epic with Microsoft Great Plains with the help of Technology Management Concepts.

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