Managing a health system’s overall revenue cycle performance requires technical skills and abilities, a trained labor force, executing strategic initiatives, reliable data and analytics, project management, subject matter vendors, and a host of other complimentary relationships and action items.
If that’s not enough pressure, now toss in the complexities and challenges associated with managing revenue cycle performance during a pandemic. If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that we have to be flexible and adapt our management to accommodate new factors, including:
- Managing revenue cycle teams that are increasingly virtual and telecommuting
- Increases in Medicaid volume and other shifts in payer mix due to higher unemployment
- Pressure from Finance to increase cash collections all while revenue is decreasing
- Team member absence and illness, including employee turnover in key positions
- Vendors that cannot execute your strategy due to the impacts of COVID-19 on their businesses
Are you confident in your revenue cycle management? Will you execute and reach your goals?
Now is not the time to simply hope the revenue cycle team can succeed in this environment. It must be managed with intent, including the tracking of volumes, key performance indicators, benchmarks, and backlogs, but more importantly a well-managed plan to improve performance and deliver results. Revenue cycle leadership must be collaborative within your organization. Your business has changed–so too should your expectations of revenue cycle management.
- Your hospital requires standards and protocols across its clinical service lines–are those same expectations communicated across its revenue cycle teams?
- Do departments understand what the denials are, why they occurred, and how they can be prevented?
- Does Health Information Management continuously complete its coding function within the allotted time to keep discharged not final billed (DNFB) at appropriate levels?
- Do business office staff identify underpayments, capture partial denials, and escalate patient complaints to ensure revenue and patient satisfaction scores are optimized?
- Does leadership’s questions to revenue cycle stakeholders get answered with timely, confident responses?
Hospital senior leaders are dealing with myriad issues related to COVID-19 and its impact on patient volumes, patient and workforce safety, revised budgets and forecasts. Having confidence in the revenue cycle should not be compromised. Do you have operational concerns, gaps in revenue cycle leadership, transitions in high profile roles, or simply want to discuss getting your revenue cycle back on track? Our experienced healthcare team can provide short-term and long-term assistance to help ease your pain points.
