ER-One Averts a Potential HR Emergency

Michigan-based ER-One, a physicianowned emergency medicine management group, provides physicians and other clinicians for hospital emergency.

ER-One is an umbrella company over two smaller divisions and employs approximately 180 total employees. The organization provides clinicians to local hospital emergency rooms so one division is made up of physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants; all licensed, highly educated, and highly compensated. The second division is made up of support personnel; billers, coders and administrative staff. ER-One works out of five clinical sites and two administrative locations throughout the state.

Brainard Joins ER-One as First-ever HR Professional
Pat Brainard, director of HR for ER-One, was the first human resources professional hired to work at ER-One. She entered a situation in which electronic records were non-existent, there were limited records of clinicians, and only a homemade Access database was available as a reference.

Brainard’s Search for a HRMS Begins
Brainard immediately began looking for a human resources management system. She needed one that could integrate multiple company locations and varying job positions and skills. A search on Google.com introduced Brainard to Ascentis Corporation, creator of HROffice.

Brainard needed to solve multiple broad-stroke problems, including accuracy of information, compliance issues, ease of access to data and being able to report on it, and organization and consistency of data. ER-One needed to track:

• Benefits enrollment, correspondence and associated fees.
• Billable dollars as related to hours worked as a measure of productivity.
• Continuing medical education expenses.
• Contract specifications and expirations.
• Educational details—medical school, residency, and fellowship.
• Eligibility to work at specific sites—credentialing.
• Licensure and special training—board certification(s).
• Performance appraisals.
• Salary information with bonuses and administrative stipends.
• Status of recruits within the application and credentialing processes.

ER-One and Ascentis partnershiptimeline, HRMS search ends
Brainard was hired in November, researched multiple HRMS’s, decided upon HROffice, had her secretary manually collect data from paper files and the legacy ER-One database, and was completely utilizing HROffice as her HRMS by the following February.

Specific ROI
Specific ROI dollar amounts are difficultto calculate since Brainard was newand didn’t experience the previous manualprocedures for long. However, somebasic estimates, considering some of thereporting functions, indicate an initial savingsof more than $6,000. More importantly,ER-One has significantly decreasedits risk exposure and improved its strategicposition. This will result in realizedgains with recruitment and retention.

Brainard’s final thoughts onHROffice
“Just because HROffice is not as convoluted as some other databases, itdoesn’t mean it isn’t as powerful andeffective. In fact, it has proven to bemore powerful than I anticipated andyet always remains simple to use.

The staff at Ascentis is a pleasure towork with. Technical support consistentlyresolves issues in a timely fashionand helped expand my use ofHROffice reporting features. I wouldhighly recommend both the companyand the products to any small or midsizedorganization.”