We struggled with this problem for 10 years. Other partners couldn’t solve it. Skypoint built out all the data mapping and Power BI reports for us, and a process that used to involve more than a hundred people can now be handled by one person.
Bickford Senior Living was founded in 1991 by the Eby family after their mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Frustrated by the lack of suitable care options, they created a personalized living residence for her in Olathe, Kansas. Today, Bickford Senior Living has grown from a family initiative into a national leader and multiple award-winner in senior living services, and offers assisted living, independent living, and memory care.
Faced with complex data challenges across its 57 locations and 3,000 residents, Bickford partnered with Skypoint to better leverage their data, capture new operational efficiencies, and free them from tedious processes weighed down by huge amounts of manual work. The groundwork for this effort was laid by cleaning and integrating data across multiple disparate systems using the Skypoint AI Platform (AIP) data lakehouse and building out custom Power BI dashboards and reports tailored to their business.
However, Bickford’s chosen platforms didn’t integrate. As a result, nurses were entering care assessments, notes, and documentation in their EHR platform, but that information couldn’t be relayed to billing systems in real time, leading to staffing and billing mismatches. Bickford estimates that almost two thirds of its residents were not being billed for the correct level of care, with some being overbilled and others underbilled.
After years of trying to improve its processes, at first internally and then with various external partners, Bickford partnered with Skypoint. First, Skypoint identified and imported the relevant data from Bickford’s systems into Bickford’s Skypoint AIP data lakehouse. Then, Skypoint performed the dimension table conforming and built out custom Power BI dashboards, giving Bickford the ability to compare levels of care reported in both its care and billing systems, all in one glance. Skypoint also provided links for Bickford users to go to the source system and resolve any mismatches if needed.
Once Bickford had a tool that allowed them to quickly identify mismatches between levels of care and billing, they were able to capture an additional $78,000 a month in revenue that they weren’t previously billing for. Just by itself, this new revenue approximates a 20x return on investment.
Bickford has a little phrase for technology: ‘Simplify technology to make the average person great.’ We want to give our employees one page with information tailored to their jobs and their branch. We’re giving them the tools to get their job done faster and easier so they can make personal connections with our residents.
