A Q&A with Troy Moore, CEO of Ellinwood Hospital & Clinic and a practicing physical therapist

Care gaps. Staff stretched thin. Manual workflows. Limited IT resources. Financial pressure. These are some of the biggest challenges rural hospitals face today—and exactly the kinds of issues the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is designed to help address.

We spoke with Troy Moore, CEO of Ellinwood Hospital & Clinic, about how his hospital used Phreesia to take on many of those same challenges. What began as a collections problem became a hospital-wide process improvement story.

Q: What challenges was Ellinwood trying to solve?

Moore: We had a few problems happening at the same time. Before Phreesia, we hadn’t been collecting online payments for nearly two years, and we weren’t collecting copays. When patients needed to pay a balance, their options were basically to mail it in or bring it to the front desk.

At the same time, a lot of our workflows were still manual. We had paper everywhere. We had after-hours calls rolling to the ER. And like a lot of rural hospitals, we were trying to keep up with patient expectations without adding more burden to staff.

Q: How did you first hear about Phreesia?

Moore: We first heard about Phreesia from a team member who had used it at another hospital. Seeing it work in a similar setting gave us confidence, and trusted peer feedback helped validate the decision.

In rural healthcare, that matters. When people you trust are already using something and seeing value from it, that carries a lot of weight.

Q: How did Phreesia help with financial sustainability?

Moore: It opened the door to collecting money up front that we never had before.

But it helped beyond that, too. Phreesia gave us a more consistent way to collect before, during and after the visit—from copays and balances to digital post-visit payments and self-service payment plans.

For a rural hospital, that supports more than cash flow. It helps sustain the hospital’s mission and its ability to keep serving the community.

Q: When did you realize this was becoming bigger than a payments project?

Moore: Pretty quickly. Once we got into onboarding, it became clear this was really about improving our processes across the hospital.

You start finding the gaps in your workflows. You start seeing the things you have just been living with. And once you begin fixing those things, the whole hospital gets better. That was one of the biggest lessons for us.

Q: What changed in intake and registration?

Moore: It helped us create a process that worked better for patients, staff and providers—not just a digital version of the old one.

We have a patient population that is roughly 75% Medicare, so change does not happen overnight. But even with that, about 83% of patients self check in. That tells you rural patients will use technology when it is introduced thoughtfully and when it genuinely makes things easier.

It also helped on the clinical side. As a physical therapist, I had been used to handing patients tools like a Neck Disability Index or other low back screeners and then calculating those scores manually. With Phreesia, those scores are ready by the time the patient gets back, which helps providers move faster and gives patients more face time focused on care.

For us, it meant a more efficient intake process across the hospital, not just replacing one clipboard with another.

Q: What changed in patient communication?

Moore: The ability to text is way more important than I imagined.

We had after-hours calls rolling to the ER. We had staff dealing with phone tag. With PhreesiaOnCall and HIPAA-compliant patient texting, we now have a better way to handle follow-up instructions, routine results and other patient communication without adding more call burden.

That improved the patient experience, but it also freed up staff time in a way that matters in a rural setting.

Q: Did limited IT resources factor into your decision?

Moore: Absolutely.

We had stopped offering online payments because we weren’t confident our payment system met the level of security we wanted. Phreesia gave us the ability to offer online payments again with the confidence that patients’ information and payments were protected.

For a rural hospital with limited IT resources, that’s a big deal. Phreesia took that burden off our plate, allowing us to meet patients’ digital expectations while relying on a secure, trusted platform.

Q: What would you tell other rural leaders considering technology to support transformation goals?

Moore: Be ready to change your processes. That is where the value really comes from.

Phreesia works best when you use it as a chance to improve how your hospital operates. For us, having the right people involved internally made a big difference, and it helped to approach it as something broader than any one workflow.

The good news is that you are not doing it alone. Phreesia was a strong partner for us from the beginning. The onboarding process helped us identify gaps we needed to fix, and the support stayed strong after go-live.

If you are willing to evolve, it can help you catch up quickly in areas that matter.

Moore: In a rural hospital, every process matters. Phreesia helped us strengthen collections, improve how we work and catch up to what patients expect.

It helped our whole hospital move forward.