When ThedaCare originally implemented Epic, a single billing office (SBO) was not an option, and most customers created multiple service areas corresponding to multiple facilities. Today Epic’s Hospital and Professional Billing modules are designed to share a single billing office in a single service area, greatly simplifying many billing and patient service workflows.
ThedaCare wanted to improve efficiency and patient satisfaction by moving to a single billing office, but the conversion would be so complex that they had been unable to get confident resource estimates for the effort, even from Epic. In 2013, ThedaCare engaged Nordic to be its partner in an enterprise-wide Epic optimization project, and the SBO conversion was included as part of the work Nordic consultants would lead.
The SBO project kicked off with a week-long Rapid Improvement Event, bringing together IT and operational staff from across the organization. The team planned for changes to multiple Epic modules, retraining of dozens of staff members, and physical relocation of billing offices. These changes were implemented over a six-month period, consolidating one billing office at a time to minimize disruption to financial operations. The first billing office consolidation went live in February 2013, with the final consolidation, involving ThedaCare’s two main hospitals, occurring in August 2013. The project was wildly successful throughout, with command centers for each go-live closing within two days and minimal issues remaining.