Providea Health Partners is a network of independent healthcare providers that share services like EHR, HR, IT, and billing to maintain their autonomy while benefiting from economies of scale. The network uses the Greenway Health EHR, which allows for customization across multiple specialties. By fully utilizing the Greenway system and customizing processes around it, Providea is able to stabilize revenues and increase efficiencies for practices joining its network. For one neurology group that switched from paper to the Greenway EHR through Providea, revenues increased 38% in the first year.

1. Case study
EHR software flexible
enough for a network
of providers
Providea Health Partners is a network of
independent healthcare providers that maintain
medical autonomy while benefiting from shared
services in electronic health records (EHR), human
resources, IT, regulatory compliance, and revenue
cycle management. Providea partners offer care in
eight locations across seven specialties, including
neurology, OB/GYN, and internal medicine.
CHALLENGE
Dr. Ken Finkelstein began Providea Health Partners
to help practices maintain their independence and
their ability to provide the highest standard of care.
“I started to understand that even if you’re a very
strong, single-specialty group, you’re not really
going to be able to compete,” he says. “I came to
understand that if I was going to stay an independent
physician — which was my goal because I’m a
horrible employee — then I was going to have to
make changes and do something. So, that started
the journey to start Providea Health Partners.”
Many smaller practices are feeling squeezed
between ever-decreasing reimbursement rates,
and ever-increasing insurance and governmental
reimbursement requirements. On the government
regulation side, the move to value-based care brings
enormous challenges. “Let’s look at the Merit-
based Incentive Payment System,” Finkelstein says.
“You have to have a tremendous amount of data-
collecting ability, and you have to be able to work
that into your practice.”
Private insurance offers no refuge for the small
practice. “We’re seeing high-deductible plans
that make it very difficult for physician groups to
collect money,” Finkelstein explains. “Right now,
the No.1 rise in your account receivables is the
patient — what patients owe, not what the insurance
companies owe. That’s a huge issue for cash flow
and for smaller practices.”
Realizing there would be strength in numbers,
Finkelstein founded Providea Health Partners to
enable physicians or physician groups to unite
under a single tax ID for significant administrative
processes from EHR to HR, but continue to maintain
their medical independence. For this model to
succeed, Providea needed a technology partner
with excellent software capabilities, the flexibility
to expertly handle multiple specialties, and the
scalability to handle additional partners as they
joined the Providea family.
SOLUTION
Dr. Finkelstein had used the Greenway Health EHR
in his individual practice due to its excellent OB/GYN
capabilities, but soon realized its broader potential.
“It’s an excellent tool for us to use among different
specialties,” he says. “One of its strengths is how
customizable it is.”
The first steps toward realizing the Providea
concept was to bring in consultants in revenue
cycle management, IT, and practice management.
© 2018 Greenway Health, LLC. All rights reserved. Cited trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of Greenway Health, LLC or
its affiliates. Other product or company names are the property of their respective owners.
“The important thing that we do at
Providea is take full advantage of the
software and our ability to customize it.”
- Dr. Ken Finkelstein, Founder,
Providea Health Partners
https://provideahealth.com

2. © 2018 Greenway Health, LLC. All rights reserved. Cited trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of Greenway Health, LLC or
its affiliates. Other product or company names are the property of their respective owners.
Case study Providea Health Partners
Finkelstein used this expertise to build an
infrastructure based on Greenway systems. They
designed the system to handle not only the behind-
the-scenes work of revenue cycle management,
but also the negotiation with vendors and payers,
and the navigation through changing regulatory
environments.
One of the principle lessons Finkelstein must convey
to practices new to Providea is that EHRs are not
just substitutes for pen and paper. “The mistake
most groups make is they take their electronic
medical records, they bring it in, they do their
training, and then they change nothing because they
just feel it takes the place of paper and pen. Well, it
does not. There’s no similarity between paper and
pen and EMR.”
That’s why Greenway Health systems remain at
the heart of Providea’s strategy. “We come into a
practice — just like we came into my practice when
we first started this nine years ago — and we make
Greenway the center of the universe,” Finkelstein
says. “And then we look at every process of how that
practice functions — how they communicate, how
they see patients — and we change those processes
to adapt to Greenway. The important thing that we
do at Providea is take full advantage of the software
and our ability to customize it.”
RESULTS
“When most medical practices go from paper to
EMR, they probably lose about 50 percent of their
revenue,” Finkelstein says. “Our last group that we
took from paper to EMR, we increased their revenue
by 38 percent in year one.” He attributes this
improvement to Providea’s mastery of Greenway
systems, which spares the practice from a painful
learning curve. Through Providea, a practice
immediately begins using the Greenway system at
maximum efficiency.
Key outcomes
• Up to 50 percent increase in revenue.
• Customizability to accommodate multiple
specialties and processes.
• Maximum scalability.
For more information on how Greenway Health can help increase your practice
revenue, call 866-242-3805 or visit greenwayhealth.com.
The benefits hold true even when a practice is
moving from a different EHR to the Providea family.
Finkelstein recalls a neurology group that came to
Providea with a separate EHR. Providea brought
Greenway in and simplified their IT environment.
“We customized their templates, and it was a very
complicated group that did all facets of neurology
and MRI and testing, so it took a while,” he says.
“But we not only stabilized and increased their
revenues, we also dramatically increased their
efficiencies of operation. Now, they’re actually using
the software the way it was designed to be used
versus as a substitute for pen and paper, and still
doing as much paperwork as before.”
Finkelstein recounts coming out of surgery, logging
in to the Providea website, and billing that surgery
so that before he even left the hospital, the bill had
been sent to the insurance company. “We do that
every day,” he says.
He founded Providea because he believes that every
practice is capable of the same. “I think that one of
the more important things to get out to physicians
is that if you have the right software, if you have
the right knowledge of the software, if you have
the ability to use it to its best ability with proper
backup, then any physician group can be extremely
successful,” he says.