Sterling PT & Wellness slashes documentation time and increases revenue per visit

Sterling Physical Therapy & Wellness is a six-provider practice with three locations in the Greater Houston area. The company’s founder and CEO, Dr. Sterling Carter, chatted with us about the decision to move to Prompt in November 2022, and how the switch has been a game-changing decision for his providers, staff, and patients.

 Since joining Prompt, the practice has realized some amazing outcomes, including:

• Initial evaluation documentation time down from 30 to 5-8 minutes
• Reimbursement rates up by more than 20%
• Arrival rates up to around 85-90%
• Billing brought fully in-house, with one biller handling everything for three locations
• Improved Plan of Care completion and patient satisfaction

Lightning-fast evaluations and documentation

Prior to their search for a new EMR, the biggest pain point at Sterling PT was the timeliness of provider notes, with therapists often staying late hours just to make sure documentation was complete and accurate. After some conversations with Prompt over a couple years, Sterling brought the practice onto Prompt, and within a few weeks they all noticed a major improvement with documenting.

Today, the practice is completely paperless, with patients typically completing intake before they come in. Average evaluation time has dropped from upwards of 30 minutes to around 5-8 minutes, helping providers cut down on after-hours work and spend more time and energy engaging with their patients. 

A seamless shift to in-house billing

Before using Prompt, the team at Sterling outsourced their billing, and felt they were paying too much while at the same time not getting reimbursed appropriately for their services. The lack of control and communication was also a challenge, but they were apprehensive to try bringing those responsibilities in-house and what that might entail.

During onboarding with Prompt, the billing team was given training on how to work more efficiently and maximize their reimbursements. Their one biller soon felt comfortable managing billing for all three locations, and helped bring average reimbursement rates from $90 to $110. Sterling also loves how much more in-control and communicative they’re able to be with their in-house billing team, with any issues or changes being resolved much faster

Smoother patient experience and better outcomes

Along with all the in-house benefits of using Prompt, Sterling says that patient satisfaction has also increased. Patients love the ability to schedule or modify appointments online, and handle their billing online as well. Patients also love having a convenient app for home exercise programs with demos on the exercises they need to be doing. Paired with the better experience that providers have been able to offer during visits, arrival rates have hit new highs between 85-90%, and patients are more consistently completing their Plans of Care.

Total visibility and strategic insights from reporting

As the clinic owner, Sterling’s personal favorite features in Prompt are the in-depth reports. The Dashboard allows him to “really see what’s going on with the clinic in real time,” and the KPIs are really easy to find and share. This has enabled him to unify the team on improvement areas and adjust their approach for better clinic outcomes.

“Since using Prompt, we’re actually able to keep everyone a little bit more accountable,” Sterling said “They can see where their KPIs are, we can see what, what, where we need to improve upon. And so we’re doing weekly meetings and we actually report from Prompt.”