Florida Hospital Association Management Corporation
Quest Health Enterprises, Inc
For Immediate Release:
Contacts:
John Mines, Senior VP, FHA Management Corporation 407/841-6230
Steve Acree, President / COO, Quest Health Enterprises 614/258-3402
Florida Hospital Association Management Corporation Signs Advertising Agreement with Quest Health Enterprises
(Orlando, FL) January 18 – The Florida Hospital Association Management Corporation (FHAMC) has signed an advertising agreement with Quest Health Enterprises (QHE) of Columbus, Ohio to promote the Quest System 2000, a software-based program that allows hospitals to reduce how much they increase patient charges annually while improving their cash flow.
Quest System 2000 is a unique product that uses statistical analysis and indexing to enable hospitals to adjust pricing at the time of billing. By reducing statistically over-priced items that result in contractual adjustments, and increasing statistically under-priced items that increase overall cash flow, Quest System 2000 lets a hospital charge less and bank more.
“With the growth of consumer driven health plans, this product is a very timely tool that FHA member hospitals can use to reduce the amount that they need to raise their charges annually to keep up with costs” said Steve Acree, President and Chief Operating Officer, QHE. “The hospital will see a reduction in contractual adjustments of between five and thirty percent, and an increase in cash of between $100 and $200 per case. This means a hospital no longer has to implement large across-the-board price increases, so employers and managed care plans will experience a moderation in annual hospital price adjustments.”
“ We’ve basically stayed with the Quest program (for 17 years) and looked at what kind of increase we want and let the Quest program do the increases where they will do the most good” said Leroy Feather, Chief Financial Officer, Community Hospitals of Williams County, Ohio. “There are pretty well only two reasons we are so successful; the physician group across the street and Quest.”
Quest System 2000 is a copyrighted precision software pricing and budgeting system that delivers more effective unit pricing results while meeting all current CMS, IRS, OIG and HIPAA requirements. Through differential analysis, the System finds the ‘best’ unit prices which are realized through individually-developed hospital-specific price indexes. For inpatients, there is an index for each DRG Number; for outpatients, for each Revenue Code. Each price index is uniformly applied to each unit price and to each payer within the same DRG or Revenue Code.
Price indexes for each hospital are developed when the hospital submits twelve months of combined financial class data. For the inpatient setting by DRG, this includes cases, days and billed charges. For the outpatient setting by Revenue Code, this includes visits and billed charges.
Because a hospital can determine at any time exactly how much additional revenue the Quest System 2000 has generated each month, it works well with any charge master optimization or system that links the revenue cycle to the supply chain. “Quest enhances performance of any revenue cycle or charge master software system” said Acree. “The Quest System 2000 does not interfere with any system the hospital may already have in place or be considering for the future.”
“Our product has a flawless compliance history” added Acree. Over 109 hospitals that have licensed the Quest pricing software product have never had one discrepancy, adverse or negative finding or comment reported by their Medicare Fiscal Intermediary following annual field and desk audits. In addition, these hospitals have continued to
receive “Unqualified Opinions” in their annual financial statements following audits by their public accounting firm.
Quest also offers client hospitals combined pre-billing pricing and budgeting. With this advanced tool, hospital revenue budgets take just a few hours to prepare. Once the Finance Department has determined operating expenses for the next year, and has allowed for a surplus or reserves, the Quest software will automatically develop and achieve the revenue budget required to meet the financial targets set by the hospital.
FHAMC and QHE have agreed that the standard Quest installation fee will be waived for FHA member hospitals licensing Quest System 2000, so there will be no investment required at all for member hospitals to participate.
Quest Health Enterprises was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1990 by James Swope and Steve Acree. Swope, now a Florida resident, holds seven U.S copyrights on the Quest System 2000 and price indexing for hospitals. Many client hospitals, primarily in the Midwest, have been using the Quest System for up to 17 years.
The Florida Hospital Association Management Corporation was founded in 1984 and offers member hospitals health information management, property and casual, employee benefits, financial, insurance, HIPAA compliance, on-site and on-line learning, retirement plan, and group purchasing services.
