Norway Lodge is a private nursing home based in Merseyside that provides 24-hour residential elderly care with a capacity of up to 29 patients at any one time. The care services they deliver, commissioned by Cheshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), are for Continuing Healthcare (CHC) packages including Funded Nursing Care (FNC).
Chris Read, Home Manager at Norway Lodge has reduced his workload from one day a month to 10 minutes a week by digitising their financial processes with support from IEG4.
When asked to describe his previous invoice and payments process, Chris acknowledged that he would spend up to one day a month creating invoices to email to the NHS Shared Business Service (SBS) in Wakefield. This was a manual process for Norway Lodge, including typing the invoices in Word, attaching to an email and ensuring the relevant information was correctly recorded before being submitted to SBS for payment. Once received by SBS, the process often took between one to three weeks for payment and sometimes payments could be missed or delayed.
Part of Chris’ role includes accepting new patients into the home, confirming the individual placement agreement with the ICB, managing the invoice and remittance processes, validating the services delivered by the home and keeping the ICB up to date with the patient’s progress. The first step with regards to accepting a new patient is often a direct enquiry from the ICB. Where a bed and a cost can be agreed for the services requested by the ICB, a paper process followed which included the issue of the individual placement agreement (IPA). This paper process was often lengthy and time consuming and also meant that while the paperwork was agreed the patient often remained in their current setting.
The main issue facing Norway Lodge was invoice discrepancies. With payments already being delayed, if there was a disagreement on the amount, the payment would be delayed even further resulting in no funds being released for, in one case, up to four months for a particular patient – but the care still had to be delivered by the setting.
In March 2023, IEG4’s Provider Portal system was implemented at Norway Lodge as part of a roll out to all providers in Cheshire East and Cheshire West Places within Cheshire and Merseyside ICB.
Since the implementation, Chris has significantly reduced his time on the system and now spends 10 minutes a week confirming which services have been delivered for each patient and this automatically updates the ICB finance system with the service confirmations. The ICB generates the information for SBS and the provider payments are received the following week. The patients are identified through patient IDs and having IDs that correlate with the remittance advice has been a huge benefit for the care home. The remittance advice is generated digitally via the Provider Portal and this has reduced the number of payment discrepancies as it allows Chris to highlight any reasons for partial or non-delivery of services. As the information is in real-time, the number of overpayments for the ICB has reduced and the use of the Provider Portal to view IPAs and remittance information digitally has removed the need for the generation and postage of invoices and remittance advices, thereby speeding up the payment process for the provider.
The time saved through the implementation of Provider Portal has completely changed the way Norway Lodge work and manage their home. Chris quoted “I would thoroughly recommend the system to anyone looking for administration relief and a system that doesn’t allow for human error, it’s been a real game changer for us”.
The new Health & Care Act Bill set out legislative changes which enable health and care organisations to work more closely together. This saw the abolishment of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and the introduction of 42 Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in July 2022, which changed the way that healthcare is commissioned.
IEG4 provides an end-to-end Digital Continuing HealthCare (CHC) system which is in use at a number of place-based ICBs within the Cheshire and Merseyside region. The aim of the software is to:
Cheshire and Merseyside ICB (previously Cheshire CCG) approached existing software supplier IEG4, and asked them to expand the current capability of their existing digital solution to include the ability to record, manage and make payments of CGC; improve the processing of payments; and provide a streamlined process for the management of invoices within their care home settings. IEG4 recommended the adoption of Provider Portal, and online system that manages CHC payments and FNC packages.
Many place-based ICBs within Cheshire and Merseyside will soon be following in the footsteps of Norway Lodge in implementing Provider Portal.
IEG4’s Digital CHC system has many benefits that help both ICBs and care providers with the management of their patient records and financial systems. The introduction of the finance module from IEG4 has fundamentally changed the way ICBs and providers, record and process data and process payments.
Providers can use it to view and manage contract and payment information including:
View electronic Individual Placement Agreements (IPA)
To discover how Provider Portal can assist you in your processes, contact us and we can provide you with a demonstration of the system.
