Salud Pediatrics Picks PCC as its Financial/Clinical Tool of Choice

PCC officially welcomed Salud Pediatrics as one of its newest practices in June, but the two-physician office in Chicago had been eyeing PCC as its practice management and EHR systems vendor of choice long before that.

“We've always said had we discovered PCC eight years ago, we would have gone with you guys,” Salud's practice manager Brandon Betancourt told us late last month. “We recently re-evaluated where we were and what tools we'd need to take us where we think we needed to go, and while we're okay with what we have in place now, we know we could do better with PCC.”

Salud first plans to replace its current billing service, MDsuite, with PCC's Partner practice management system. The office's transition from EncounterPRO to PCC EHR will take place down the road, said Betancourt, whose first priority is maximizing revenue with a pediatric-based practice management system. Features such as PCC's Practice Vitals Dashboard, which offers a web-based menu of clinical and financial reports on pediatric benchmarks, he said, will aid him in making financial decisions based on sound, practice-based clinical data.  

“A lot of practice management systems out there are really just claim submission systems,” Betancourt said. “PCC understands the business side of pediatrics better than we understand it ourselves.”

Salud Pediatrics was established in 2004 by Betancourt's wife, Dr. Joanna Betancourt. The practice currently employs one other pediatrician and a pediatric nurse practitioner. Small and patient-centric, Salud is in good company at PCC, whose typical clients are 1-10 physician practices that take a serious approach to the business side of pediatrics.

Brandon Betancourt is no stranger to PCC. An MBA who eats, sleeps and drinks practice management, he views PCC's practice management guru Chip Hart as a kindred spirit. The two men met through one of Hart's seminars and have traded knowledge and enthusiasm for pediatric-based financial matters ever since. Last year, Betancourt shared his expertise with other PCC practices as a teacher at the Users' Conference in Vermont.

In talking about Salud's new alliance with PCC, Betancourt equates the company's expertise and services with that of a personal trainer.

“If you work out, you can get really buff on your own, but the majority of us do a little better when we have a trainer who can steer us the right way and push us a little more than we might do otherwise,” he said. “We've done very well, but how much better can we be when we have somebody like PCC, which has been around for 30 years, helping us.”