The Challenge
Prior to the adoption of Bp Allied, Sunshine Coast-based charity Bloomhill Cancer Care had been reliant on an outdated Practice Management System. It had lacked the convenience, functionality and tailored services they required in order to run their survivor/wellness centre smoothly, especially given the diverse range of allied health professionals and specialist oncology nurses that operate at the centre, helping people to live well with cancer.
The most pressing issue with their previous system was a lack of user permissions, and general unreliability when it came to data security. The system, as a whole, was slow, cumbersome, and lacked a lot of general functionality that medical and allied health practices today would expect to be fairly standard.
While the original system did possess a repository for clinical notes, it was quite basic, for example it required attachments of additional notes or typed notifications to amend patient records. Staff would need to print off a list of appointments for each clinician, and notes would then be attached to that. It was the responsibility of a single staff member to handle the booking of appointments. Overall, there was a lot of manual work required for tasks that should ordinarily be handled automatically by one central Practice Management System.
When exploring options to improve their Practice Management System, Bloomhill Cancer Care first investigated whether a version update would provide the functionality they required. However, it was determined that this would largely be a band-aid fix that would not solve many of the underlying shortcomings in the software’s design.
The Practice
Bloomhill Cancer Care opened their doors in 1997 and is a nurse-led, community-based cancer care centre operating as a charity in Buderim, approximately one hour north of Brisbane, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Serving hundreds of clients from all background and all ages, their Practice offers services such as psychology and counselling, exercise physiology, occupational therapy and a range of holistic and complementary therapies such as acupuncture, lymphoedema management, reflexology and oncology massage.
Trish Wilson is the Clinical Services Manager at Bloomhill and her role involves overseeing the clinical team and services provided at Bloomhill. She is responsible for overseeing the quality assurance for the clinical department and is involved in the planning of the Practice’s current and future service offerings.
Bloomhill Cancer Care currently employs 15 staff and consultants on their clinical team, and approximately 10 support staff at the wellness centre. Bloomhill also runs opportunity shops, which contribute significant funds toward service provision for clients. Community support through donations, monthly giving, bequests and in-kind contributions are also integral for enabling Bloomhill to be there for people with cancer when they need it most.
Selecting and Rolling Out Bp Allied
Bloomhill considered a range of solutions to meet their practice management requirements before ultimately deciding upon Bp Allied, including an update to the existing system. They evaluated proposals from other vendors in their decision making process.
Operating a clinic like Bloomhill Cancer Care, that provides such a wide array of clinical support services, meant they required a Practice Management System that would be able to handle a wide variety of disciplines. It quickly became evident that even though there were numerous options available on the market, many were very light on customisation options, and there weren’t any ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions that fully suited Bloomhill’s requirements.
When asked what prompted Bloomhill to ultimately decide on Bp Allied as their Practice Management System of choice, Trish Wilson said it was primarily due to their first interaction with Bp Allied Account Specialist, Mel Dobell.
“She was incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly helpful and had a solutions-based way of thinking. The ability of Bp Allied to be customised and meet each of our specific requirements was the biggest reason as to why Bp Allied was our final decision.”
As the final decision maker, Trish worked with a project manager and Best Practice Software staff to figure out exactly how the rollout would work. They decided what data they needed Bp Allied to store, which specific functionality was required, and how they could transfer all of their existing client data over to the new software.
“The rollout of Bp Allied met, and actually probably exceeded our expectations…I came in on the weekend to oversee the initial migration of data, but I really didn’t need to be here at all. It all went really smoothly. The role out of the software was staged and staff were brought on board quickly, with only a few small hitches, which were sorted quickly.”
Since Bp Allied
Since onboarding Bp Allied a little under two years ago, Bloomhill Cancer Care has been thrilled with how it has helped them to streamline their operations and consolidate a range of functions into one product.
While Bloomhill is yet to undertake any formal audit of how Bp Allied has improved their Practice operations, they are certain that many of the features within the software have improved day-to-day operations for staff throughout the Practice. Bp Allied’s robust and intuitive appointment calendar received special mention, as did the comprehensive permissions’ system, allowing Bloomhill to assign varying levels of access to staff with differing roles, something that was completely lacking in their previous software, and an essential requirement for maintaining confidentiality of health information.
The most significant improvement, however, was Bp Allied’s ability to be customised to Bloomhill’s specific needs.
“The customisation has been a huge benefit – what a psychologist needs is completely different to what an exercise physiologist needs. To have a dashboard that caters to what each discipline needs is incredibly beneficial. An added benefit is that each of the disciplines can access each other’s client notes enhancing our multi-disciplinary and holistic approach. ”
Trish chuckled and mentioned that they’ve customised Bp Allied so specifically to their needs, that in some ways, it doesn’t resemble the standard platform at all. This speaks to how versatile and flexible Bp Allied is, especially for multi-discipline practices. She goes on to say that the usability of Bp Allied rates very highly. Some staff were resistant to the change at first, however, since becoming more familiar with the platform, they are discovering new features and functionality which continues to garner an ever-positive response.
Asked for her final thoughts on Bloomhill’s transition to Bp Allied, Trish had this to say:
“We’re really happy with our relationship with Best Practice Software. We’ve been given great service, we’ve been treated as valued customers and really appreciate that us being a charity was taken into consideration…we’ve had such a great experience with Bp Allied that we’re immediately looking at Bp Premier for when we get our GP clinic up and running!”
To learn more about Bloomhill Cancer Care, visit https://www.bloomhill.com.au/
To find out more about Bp Allied, to learn how it can assist your clinic or to request a trial, visit https://bpsoftware.net/bp-allied/