In 1946, Sarah Delamarter began caring for seniors in her Oregon home as a means of supplementing the family’s income. By 1985, her pioneering efforts to provide high-quality, long-term nursing in a caring and compassionate manner led to the founding of Prestige Care Inc.

Today, Prestige Care provides independent living, assisted living, rehabilitation and home health services in more than 80 locations across the western United States while maintaining the family-focused care pioneered by Delamarter. In February, Prestige Care announced that eight of its skilled nursing centers had earned the designation of “Best Nursing Home” in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Nursing Homes report.[

Tasked with centralizing and speeding invoice processing, Tyler Nelson, cash manager and accounts payable supervisor, knew the organization needed an information management system that included automation. PCI previously had relied on manual mail sorting and hand-keyed data entry to process more than 24,000 paper-based invoices annually. The company struggled to maintain accurate records across multiple facilities without duplicating or occasionally even losing information, causing payment errors. In addition, receiving payment authorizations often took too long.

“It was very frustrating for my staff because there were lots of copies of each document floating around,” Nelson said. “Things would get lost, and they were duplicating each other’s work. It also took a lot of time to receive responses from those authorized to pay the bills, as there was not a good system to notify them they needed to approve something or to follow up with them.”

After implementing a cloud-based enterprise content management service (ImageSilo), PCI has cut processing times by more than 50% and locked down sensitive financial information.

“ImageSilo allows us to track and find 100% of our bills, 100% of the time,” Nelson said. “We know for sure that a bill has been paid; nothing gets lost or paid twice.”

The process starts by sending invoices to DocuDriven, a service bureau, for scanning. As invoices are scanned, an artificial intelligence engine automatically extracts important data and sends it to the accounting application, Sage Intacct, eliminating the need to hand-key invoice information. Once the information is uploaded to the cloud service, the system automatically routes invoices through approval processes while alerting users of items needing their attention, so nothing is lost or delayed while waiting for payment approval.

These automation capabilities save PCI almost 3,000 hours of productive time each year, at an estimated value of $88,000.

“Thanks to ECM, we have been able to increase the visibility of what is going on in the accounts payable department,” Nelson said. “The AP processing services have helped automate workflow and provide companywide consistency and control.”

Putting this knowledge to use

The Prestige Care story offers several key ideas that can help any senior living community looking to improve through technology. In particular, if your goals include improving cyber security, enhancing records management, or automating processes, then you should consider ECM.

Check out the features and products listed below to assist your purchase and implementation process.

Features to look for:

Records management

  • Keyword and full-text search
  • One system for many file types
  • Records retention policies

Security

  • Encryption
  • Strong password enforcement
  • Content-specific access

Automation

  • Workflow
  • Robotic process automation

Products chosen by Prestige Care

  • ImageSilo – cloud-based ECM service, including workflow
  • PaperVision Capture – scanning and indexing
  • PaperVision Forms Magic – AI-driven engine within PaperVision Capture that recognizes and extracts key information off invoices as they’re being scanned