TCS Healthcare Technologies
Delivering Enhanced Care Management Solutions

A closer look at moving to value-based healthcare reveals that many healthcare and managed care systems continue to use outdated technology to manage their populations. Ultimately, technology that is not designed for the future not only slows down necessary processes, it can lead to medical errors, missed opportunities, low provider and member satisfaction, and unnecessary medical spending. Organizations who embrace the idea of moving forward with newer technology can find themselves purchasing expensive technology that after several months or even years, meets poor adoption rates or just does not meet their needs. From a technology perspective, the successful transition to high-quality, value-based care lies in understanding the concepts of “the use case” and “outputs”, procuring the right technology, and effectively configuring the right solution to meet the multi-layer needs of the organization.

Established in 1983, TCS Healthcare Technologies (TCS) specializes in developing software to support managed care workflows across the full spectrum of risk-bearing organizations. With the mission of being the bridge between healthcare, social care, and managed care, TCS stands out among a crowded field of healthcare software companies. “Beginning with the procurement process and flowing right through to going live, there are two solid guide posts that lead to client success; domain knowledge and flexibility,” says Deborah Keller, CEO of TCS. “Very few of our clients have a single book of business,” says Keller. “Most of our clients are managing at least four lines of business with workflows that must vary to meet the various regulatory and reporting standards of each. Success requires a flexible system implemented by a team that not only understands the various use cases but have configured highly variable workflows for many clients for many years. That’s TCS.”

As managed care models continue to evolve, so too must the products designed to support it. While TCS’ on-premise solution, Acuity Advanced, is still widely used, Keller says, “We understand that some clients really need a SaaS solution.

Whether it is because they are a start-up with limited technology teams or they are a large health system with the need to leverage APIs to transfer and mine data real-time from across the care spectrum, SaaS is sometimes the better option.” TCS’ answer to this need is their latest product ACUITYnxt. Released in 2019, ACUITYnxt offers a full range of features to support stratification, automation, case management, and authorizations. “Basically, our development team has built what me and the other managed care nurses within TCS have wished for over many collective professional years. It is what you want to have during a CMS audit,” quips Keller.

When it comes to software, the user experience is everything

With all technology and process, change is difficult, and it takes time. The fax machine is still not dead. In managed care fax machine use persists for a variety of reasons including ease of use, security, and the fact that is sits squarely in the workforce’s comfort zone. The evolution away from this workflow is one of the many success stories within TCS’ client base. Within 90 days of implementing Acuity Advanced with Acuity Connect, one client achieved an astounding shift from 100 percent of authorizations being submitted via fax to 87 percent being submitted via the portal. The client was able to re-allocate team members previously managing faxes to performing higher-level member engagement functions such as telephonic screenings.

When asked about COVID-19 and the future of TCS, Keller notes, “Like all businesses, we had to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has changed us. We were in the middle of several large initiatives including hiring several new positions, opening our Wilmington, NC office, and developing the ACUITYnxt 1.7 release. I feel very fortunate that of the many things we learned one was that our foundation is as solid as we always believed it to be. While the way we go about getting things done is a bit different, our mission and culture are the same.”