Pennsylvania Association of Rehabilitation Facilities (PARF) Annual Conference

Thank you to all those who attended the 2008 Pennsylvania Association of Rehabilitation Facilities (PARF) Annual Conference and a special thanks to those who attended the sessions on “Improving Workshop Operations”. Vertex was asked to facilitate a discussion panel specifically on “Collecting Time and Pieces for Payroll” and “Higher Customer Responsiveness and Workshop Profitability”. Our panelists this year included Bob Ames from Allied Health Services, Marsha Darrell from Shadowfax and Alice Sankey from Lark Enterprises. They shared their experiences regarding automation of their individual work operations and the benefits they realized as a result of the change to automated systems.

For example, panel members provided detailed automation benefits such as:

• Now only takes a half hour to reconcile payroll vs. previously taking 1 day
• Instantly able to pull a NISH report vs. taking 2 days to generate the NISH report
• Immediately able to determine inventory vs. taking hours to manually count
• Automation has improved our professional image with customers
• We can give an instant and accurate job completion date based on productivity levels
• Speaking with knowledge to the customer puts them at ease and builds trust
• Received more orders because the customer is confident in our automation process
• Are now viewed as a competitor to for-profit agencies because of increased efficiency, accuracy and increased knowledge

The session attendees agreed that the Payroll and Workshop Operations sessions were informative, interactive and well facilitated.  We look forward to seeing you at the conference next year! 

~  Jamie Bellomy