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It's June 2010 and I am proud to be delivering our 3rd State of the Union
address from our corporate headquarters in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
I would like to begin by thanking all of you, the GRS team members,
for your unending dedication to our mission of improving the lives we touch
through the delivery of high-quality healthcare and everyday compassion.
Recently, we have been making a number of changes and introducing new initiatives
that will allow us to, eventually, minimize stress on you and your patients
while maximizing the quality care we deliver.
I would like to use this address to explain some of these changes
and why each of them should make you proud to be a GRS team member!
My goal is that everyone throughout the company is aware
not only of what changes we are making, but why we are making them.
Today, I’ll discuss ways that we have improved our flexibility
in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.
This includes a new job design option for full-time therapists;
the addition of a new clinical discipline;
a partnership with a vendor management company called Medefis;
as well as many of the updates and improvements to our technology systems.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Remarkable Options initiative
that we recently rolled out to all full-time therapists.
While this option is only available to full-time therapists,
I want everyone at GRS to be aware of the new and creative way
we are empowering team members to align their career goals with their personal needs.
Full-time Speech, Occupational and Physical therapists have been asked
to evaluate their individual needs and decide between two different roles:
Therapist I or Therapist II.
Although the responsibilities of both jobs are similar,
they are distinguished slightly by their level of responsibility, job requirements,
and methods of compensation.
In each discipline, the Therapist I role is an hourly, non-exempt job.
The Therapist II role, on the other hand, is a salaried, exempt job.
Therapists who want more flexibility in their schedule
and more control over their actual hours worked may prefer the Therapist I role.
Alternatively, therapists looking to expand their breadth of experience
might find the Therapist II role to be a better fit.
It’s their choice.
If you have any questions about the Remarkable Options program,
please speak with your manager, your HR business partner, or visit Rehab Central.
Speaking of flexibility, can you imagine receiving texts and emails when there is a shift available at a nearby gym?
Well, that capability is closer than you might think.
We’ve recently signed up with a vendor management company called Medefis.
The Medefis system comes with a lot of benefits, including, as I mentioned,
the ability to alert our clinicians through text or email when a shift opens at a nearby gym.
It will also be the responsibility of Medefis to manage each of the 100+ staffing agencies that we contract with for purchased service clinicians. 00:03:40.84 Other benefits to GRS include an increased candidate flow, consolidated billing,
more competitive pricing, and the improved ability to tap into our own internal pool before notifying vendors that we have a need.
If you have any questions about the Medefis Vendor Management System, please contact your GRS Staffing Coordinator.
I’d also like to take a moment to welcome our newest team members,
our colleagues from Respiratory Health Services.
Over the past couple of months, we have been working to integrate Respiratory Health Services into GRS.
Respiratory Health Services has developed an excellent reputation,
and with the integration underway, GRS will have the unique advantage of becoming the only rehab organization comprised of four disciplines:
physical, occupational, speech, and respiratory therapies.
This integration makes possible a highly coordinated and comprehensive care delivery model,
while offering our rehab and respiratory clinicians greater access to resources.
So on behalf of all of us at GRS, welcome!
I would now like to explain what we have done to help our therapists with electronic documentation.
Through feedback I receive from surveys, focus groups, emails, and phone calls;
I get the sense that sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what changes are mandated by the government
and what changes we are making for good clinical documentation.
On October 1, 2010, the government will begin using a RUGs IV reimbursement system.
While this change will not go into effect until the fall,
I think it is important that all members of our GRS team are aware that we began preparing for the change 6 months ago.
First, we began rolling out ROX, an updated version of Rehab Optima.
We decided to implement ROX to allow our therapists time to share their feedback and gain confidence in the new system.
As with all decisions we make, our goal is to improve the lives we touch.
To that end, the ROX system allows therapists to achieve a more comprehensive level of evaluation than ever before.
Embedded within ROX is broadened clinical reasoning that prompts our therapists to produce a more robust assessment of the patient,
in turn, developing a highly specialized plan of care, proving medical necessity and therefore reducing denials.
An additional benefit to using the ROX system is the promise of a smoother transition to RUGs IV in October.
RUGs IV also seeks to provide patients and residents with the highest level of care possible,
which requires extremely detailed documentation.
As a GRS therapist, you have already been using and mastering this level of documentation within the ROX system.
We have introduced a few specialty evals and more are in the works,
which should streamline the documentation somewhat.
While I can see the long term benefits of the system,
I will not deny the extra time, work and patience,
adjusting to this system has required and I thank you.
All new programs have their challenges–
ROX is no exception.
However, our IS department has developed a SWAT team to collect feedback about system bugs with ROX.
They’ve identified several functions that took longer than before or that have been creating errors.
This SWAT team works with the ROX vendor to develop solutions and inform ROX trainers about these fixes.
While there are still some issues to resolve,
we thank you for your ongoing patience and understanding while we work out the last few glitches.
Our IS team is also looking closely at improving the methods we use for electronic documentation.
As technology improves, so do our options for providing you with additional flexibility.
We have developed ROX Mobile which is a strategic offering that is positioned to be used by clinicians to extend access to service entry,
clinical documentation, messaging, and electronic signature functionality to an iPod Touch and an iPad.
My goal is always to remove any barriers from patient care.
I realize that I have asked for many things to be done in a rather short timeframe.
I understand the added stress and pressure we are all under.
I'm sure the changes that we have made will help us to prepare for the transition to RUGs IV in the fall.
Change is inevitable, it is often scary, but rest assured, any change we make,
has been scrutinized, researched, and tested,
until we are certain that it supports our mission of
“improving the lives we touch through the delivery of high quality healthcare and everyday compassion.
We have dealt with many changes in the past and always suceeded.
I would like to end this address by, again, thanking you for your ongoing support,
hard-work and dedication – to our company, to each other, and to our patients.
Take care.