Community Healthcare System in Northwest Indiana enhanced their user experience by adopting PeopleSoft analytics, dashboards, and several new features

At Community Healthcare System in Northwest Indiana, our mission is to provide exceptional care for patients across every stage of life. To support our operations, we utilize PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management, and PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, all running on MS-SQL. We recently embarked on an upgrade journey that has significantly enhanced our efficiency, usability, and capabilities.

The upgrade

Community Healthcare System recently completed a comprehensive upgrade, adopting PeopleTools 8.60.07, FSCM PUM 48, and HCM PUM 46. This upgrade marked a pivotal moment in our journey, allowing us to harness several key features that have brought tremendous value to our organization.

Key features and benefits

• OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards: With the transition from Kibana to OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards, the change was seamless and transparent for our end-users. The absence of index rebuilding saved us valuable time. We can now effortlessly search for and access data, greatly benefiting our eProcurement and supplier contract management processes.
• Real-time indexing: Enabling real-time indexing for eProcurement, expenses, vendors, suppliers, and supplier contracts has transformed our workflows. It allows us to access and create contracts immediately after adding new items to the item master. This, in conjunction with global search, enables our Procurement department to retrieve information instantaneously, eliminating the wait times we previously encountered.
• Custom dashboards: We've developed custom dashboards in our Accounts Payables and Payroll departments to provide in-depth insights. These dashboards offer an overview of total compensation for employees, enhancing our ability to manage payroll efficiently.
• PUM Automated Updates: We make use of PUM Automated Updates to automatically download and apply PRPs. As we move forward, we're exploring the possibility of downloading the next PUM image as soon as it becomes available.
• Delivered dashboards: Community Healthcare System has deployed PeopleSoft-delivered dashboards across Financial Management, Supply Chain Management, and Human Capital Management. These dashboards are widely used in areas like expense management, purchasing, finance, accounts payables, workforce equity, and benefits. Recently, we introduced commitment control dashboards, expanding their utility.
• New features adoption: We've embraced several new features, including fluid job and fluid position management, benefits plan comparison, benefits open enrollment, and payroll quick calculation. Payroll quick calculation has proven particularly popular, and we had it in production within just one week of its general availability.

Outcomes

The upgrade has not only streamlined our operations but has also empowered our teams with new tools and capabilities to provide even better healthcare services to our community. We're now more efficient, agile, and capable than ever before, thanks to the partnership with Oracle and the continuous evolution of their PeopleSoft software.
Community Healthcare System is committed to delivering excellence in healthcare, and this upgrade has played a significant role in making our mission a reality. We look forward to further developments and to continue leveraging the power of technology to enhance healthcare delivery.

Community Healthcare System (CHS) automated more than 1000 test cases using PeopleSoft Test Framework to execute end-to-end functional testing of 75% of the healthcare business processes with built in validations. Our automated testing methodology has allowed us to stay current with the latest PeopleSoft updates and save the business hundreds of hours of manual testing. We developed a dashboard to provide visibility to management into the testing automation with real-time results.

CHS has developed dashboards and Pivot Grids to eliminate daily emailed reports which provides real-time actionable data. For example, Accounts Payable match exception processing has reduced the number of match exceptions by 50% and quicker resolution of match exceptions to avoid late payments. The usage of WorkCenters and Dashboards has made the business more efficient by providing a central location to monitor and take appropriate actions.

CHS has improved the user experience by implementing delivered Fluid technology as well as bolt-on modules developed specifically for healthcare. We have implemented Fluid Financial Structure Requests to convert our paper request process to electronic with notifications and approvals. Implemented Fluid mobile approvals providing all employees simplified transaction approval process using mobile devices.

CHS has implemented PeopleSoft Travel and Expense applications to eliminate paper, increase efficiency and enforce policies. We integrated this with Google Maps for accurate mileage reporting, Twilio texting of receipts and PeopleSoft unified navigation to HCM. Also created a bolt-on Fluid application to control Continuing Medical Education expense reimbursement for physicians and nurse practitioners.

See also

Community Healthcare System has also been recognized as an expansion innovator.