Liberty Medical Center's financial and billing software has been provided by American upgraded

Liberty Medical Center's financial and billing software has been provided by American HealthNet (AHN) through the use of their DataFlex 4 version, which is a DOS based program. AHN discontinued its support for the DataFlex 4 version, effective December 31, 2008. As of January 1, 2009, AHN no longer provides any type of maintenance support for the DataFlex 4 version and will no longer provide any upgrades, updates, or patches to ensure the accuracy of the information obtained from the system. There are no Federal or other regulatory compliance updates, no payroll tax table updates and no support for any problems or errors occurring during usage after December 31, 2008. Last summer, Liberty Medical Center completed an analysis to allow us to make a decision whether to upgrade with the existing vendor, or replace our system entirely. This analysis included a comparison of three vendors, AHN and two others. Discussions were held at the Board level and a decision was made to upgrade the system with our current vendor. AHN's new windows based program is called Clarus. Since we were an existing customer, AHN allowed us to continue to use the DataFlex 4 version, with minimal maintenance, until the upgrade could be completed.

The administrative staff of Liberty Medical Center has been working diligently over the past few months to ensure all the necessary data would be converted to the new program. As of January 30th, Liberty Medical Center is no longer using the DataFlex 4 program, which has been used by the facility since 1997. From January 31st through February 6th, all the files were being converted to the new format in Clarus. Beginning, February 9th, the staff will be using the new system exclusively. Although, it is the same company, and the same program, just upgraded to Windows, there are still a lot of differences in what the program requires. Many changes have been made to our procedures to allow us to more efficiently complete the billing cycle from when a patient checks in at the clinic and/or Hospital for laboratory, radiology, or physical therapy to when we print off your statement and mail it out to you.

We are asking the community to be patient with our admission staff, clinic and hospital billing staff, and insurance staff, as we go through this change. Each person who will be using this program has been trained, and will be receiving additional education next week during what we term our “Go Live” phase. However, it takes many hours of hands on experience with a new program to master it. As part of this conversion, we will verify your personal information, such as address, phone number, and insurance information when you check in. This process will take a little bit longer at first, but in the long run, if all the information is correct when you walk in the door, we can do a better job of assisting you in making sure your insurance company pays what is owed on your behalf.

If you have any questions during this transition, please contact either Karen Shaw, Clinic Administrator at 759-5194, for clinic related issues or Shari Meissner at 759-5181 ext. 31, for hospital and billing