To keep Coleman providers engaged with clients, CEO Hattie Tracy’s team sought ways to stay on top of paperwork. The result: Eleos Health’s behavioral health-specific AI platform as a great benefit to Coleman and its clients.
Challenges
Having worked as a provider herself, Tracy is all-too-familiar with the pain of paperwork.
“Most of our staff are in this field because they want to work with people, not because they want to spend a lot of time doing documentation and paperwork,” Tracy said. “And unfortunately, they end up spending a lot of their time doing documentation and paperwork—just as I did when I was doing direct service.”
Beyond fueling stress and burnout, unmanageable documentation loads often cause delays in note finalization and submission—which then slows down payments.
Plus, when providers are pressed for time, they’re more likely to resort to shortcuts like copying and pasting from one note to another—a practice that can land healthcare organizations in hot water in the event of a compliance audit.
“We were really looking at what we could do to improve our staff’s work-life balance and enable them to focus more on providing services to clients,” Tracy said. “They still have to do the documentation, but if there was a way to alleviate one of their biggest frustrations—that’s really what I was looking for when I first came across Eleos.”
Solution
Coleman began implementing Eleos in 2023, starting with a small user group. Providers Shawnda Hochstetler and Karen Fleming, for example, experienced near-immediate relief from the burden of paperwork once they started the new system.
Hochstetler, an outpatient therapist, praises the time savings: “It has been an invaluable tool to me as a mental health professional providing more service to clients.”
Fleming, a clinical psychologist, has observed throughout her career a proliferation of documentation and compliance requirements—and the various technologies that are supposed to help providers meet them. But she said no other platform has come close to offering the level of relief she has experienced with Eleos.
“This is the first time I’ve participated in a technology that’s really eased the burden of paperwork,” stated Fleming. “Eleos has the potential to make me a better therapist, and that’s pretty important to me.”
CEO Hattie Tracy sees additional compliance benefits. “When I think about chart audits, Eleos makes me worry less about paybacks because you’re not going to have the cloning of documentation that sometimes you might see when clinicians are just burned out from doing their documentation. So the compliance piece has been really beneficial for us,” states Tracy.
Results
At the team level, Coleman saw immediate results in the way of reduced documentation and submission time—with providers spending 70% less time writing and submitting progress notes than they did before adopting the new methodology.
“Obviously, there’s some benefit when our staff are getting their documentation done more quickly, because that means we’re getting the bills out more quickly and keeping cash flow moving at a much better rate,” Tracy said. “But the fact that our staff are spending less time doing documentation is also wonderful because I want them focused on providing services to the clients. The clients deserve that—and the staff deserve that. That’s the most important piece.”
CONTACT INFORMATION
Coleman Health Services
Steve Bossart, VP of Business Development and Marketing
330-676-6921
steve.bossart@colemanservices.org