Success Stories
Anderson 3 School District (SC)
Overview
Anderson 3 School District (Anderson 3 SD) in South Carolina is a busy district. Currently serving over 500 special needs children there are a lot of services to track – and a great deal of potential revenue to be lost if services are not accurately tracked. Anderson 3 SD makes sure all of their students’ needs are being taken care of, parents kept informed and services billed using EXCENT Online® and the EXCENT® Medicaid billing module.
Anderson 3 SD is the birthplace of the EXCENT product. Don Beck, co-founder of Horizon Software Systems, Inc., now Global Education Technologies (GET) worked in Anderson 3 SD, along with his wife, special education teacher, Carol Beck, and realized the need for a comprehensive special education management system as he watched his wife and other educators struggle with the increasing load of paperwork required. This led to the development of EXCENT and the founding of Horizon Software Systems, Inc.
Don remained close with the district even after co-founding Horizon. In early 2000, Charlene Powell, Medicaid/ESE Secretary for the district, approached Don about the increasing amounts of work required to submit Medicaid claims to the South Carolina Office of School-Based Health. Don took Charlene’s request and developed what would become EXCENT Medicaid.
The EXCENT Medicaid Advantage
Rather than having to re-key student data and service transactions onto Medicaid forms, EXCENT Medicaid uses the data already at hand in EXCENT Online to generate all of the required Medicaid billing forms. This reduces errors, saves time and streamlines the entire Medicaid billing process. Anderson 3 SD has been using the EXCENT Medicaid module since 2004 and has increased Medicaid billing revenue an amazing 650%!
How has Anderson 3 SD increased Medicaid revenues so dramatically?
Charlene begins each month by downloading a list of all students in the district - both general education and special education students - where she generates the Form 270 to submit to the state. The state flags the students who are eligible and returns a Form 271. The whole process of checking for Medicaid eligibility only takes about 30 minutes from the time Charlene starts to when she gets a response from the state. Submitting all students to the state for reimbursement for nursing services, transportation and therapy services has resulted in the 650% increase in Medicaid billing revenue. Without EXCENT Medicaid Charlene would have a much harder time determining eligibility of students, and teachers would have a much harder time tracking and reporting the Medicaid eligible services they provide.
Charlene notifies teachers across her district which students are eligible for Medicaid reimbursement. Using the EXCENT Encounter Log teachers can quickly and easily enter the services they provide students throughout the month. At the end of each month Charlene runs a report that extracts all of the records for services provided. She sends this report to the state for verification, processing and reimbursement. If the state denies a Medicaid claim Charlene can easily access the record with the error, correct it and resubmit the service to the state for reimbursement.
Charlene notes that most of the time the errors are easy to identify and to remedy. Most errors are due to a wrong code being entered for a service; the service provided not matching the student’s stated Medicaid eligibility reasons; or incorrect date and time increments being entered. However, if there is an error code Charlene can not resolve herself, she knows she can depend on the GET team to help her identify the error code, correct the error and resubmit the claim. The ability to correct records and resubmit them has also assisted in the increased Medicaid revenues Anderson 3 SD has received over the past three years since implementing EXCENT Medicaid in the district.
Medicaid allows districts to back-bill for services for up to twelve months after the services have been provided. Charlene likes the flexibility EXCENT Medicaid has that enables her to continually extract records that have been updated or completed since her last submission to the state. By using EXCENT Online and EXCENT Medicaid, it is simple for Charlene to ensure that Anderson 3 SD is optimizing their Medicaid revenue opportunities and not leaving any Medicaid money unclaimed.
Why Anderson 3 SD remains loyal to GET
As a long-time user of EXCENT Online and EXCENT Medicaid, Charlene is very happy with the software, she notes, “it is easy to use, any time you have a problem, you can get help immediately.” She also adds, “I just don’t feel I would get that kind of response from another company.” Additionally, Charlene says she “likes the layout of the program. It is a really easy program to use.”
Over time Charlene has researched many web tools including the free software available through the South Carolina Office of School-Based Health, but has remained loyal to EXCENT because she has always been extremely pleased with how easy and efficient the programs are to use.
When asked why she recommends EXCENT to other districts, Charlene noted she likes how straightforward it is for her to do the data extraction, to check the eligibility of Medicaid reimbursements, and most importantly to get the help she needs. She feels the GET team goes above and beyond in helping to set-up the software to meet the needs of their customers and are always there to help in any way they can.