As the patient responsibility portion of the cost of healthcare continues to rise, forward-thinking providers are increasingly focusing their revenue cycle teams on strategies that deliver a positive patient billing experience and drive patient responsibility balance recoveries.
If you are wondering how you can enhance your revenue cycle management and provide best-in-class patient experience, the answer is to partner with an expert. The right partner frees up your resources to focus on providing the best care possible.
Outsourcing brings an entire organization’s worth of resources dedicated to enforcing firm processes that help eliminate oversights. To maximize returns, every patient interaction must have a clear focus so nothing is overlooked, and balance resolution is realized.
How to Improve Healthcare Revenue Cycle Processes
Here are a few ways to improve your processes:
Fully Outsourced Revenue Management
Demand to outsource full revenue cycle management is up 86 percent from 2015 among hospitals and inpatient organizations. This is happening because more and more facilities are realizing the financial benefits of bringing in a third party to manage their entire revenue cycle. Partnering with a trusted vendor leads to effective revenue cycle optimization, more money in your bottom line and your staff being free to focus on their own job responsibilities and transitioning to value-based care (more on that below).
Partial Outsourcing for Better Revenue Management
While more organizations are looking to fully outsource their revenue cycle management, the survey above also shows that outsourcing some of their key administrative functions to increase revenue is being utilized. We are seeing this trend because organizations are realizing how important it is to transition to the value-based care system (facilities are reimbursed based on the quality of care they provide) rather than the fee-for-service system (being reimbursed based on the amount of patients that are seen).
Investments in Analytics
The transition to value-based care is a challenge for some organizations who are still stuck in the fee-for-service model. Analytics can help you see where your revenue cycle is at currently and understand that performance on key quality measures. Revenue cycle analytics are vital in keeping an organization running and profitable by collecting and organizing data in an easily accessible format. One hospital in particular saw their annual cash flow increase by $2.4 million dollars just by utilizing analytics to see real-time data and using that to trigger alerts to coders and physicians.
Development of Patient Communication & Payment Channels
It is important to maintain a healthy line of communication between you and your patients. Having clear communication increases the chances of them paying their bill on time and in full. According to a 2015 TransUnion study, more than half of patients surveyed reported that they were either sometimes or always confused by medical bills. Clear, concise communication and patient billing remedies this issue by setting easily-understood expectations which increases patient satisfaction.
This is another area where outsourcing can help your organization; through Extended Business Office solutions such as Patient Responsibility Collections and/or System-wide Combined Guarantor Billing statements – the former helps to refine your staffs’ focus and the latter (at least when partnered with us) streamlines the billing process using Patient Friendly Billing fundamentals.
Consulting Engagements & Process Improvement
It is extremely important that your staff is aware of the areas where your revenue cycle management is falling short and how they can help improve your overall processes. This can be done through consulting, educational seminars and conferences, training courses and more.
Why Outsource to RevCycle?
RevCycle, Inc. offers a comprehensive suite of extended business office services, a fully integrated patient responsibility balance management process and best-in-class healthcare bad debt collection programs. We optimize your revenue cycle through our unique operating philosophy, sophisticated call center technology, expertise in workflow design and our highly-trained and experienced staff.
If your goal is to reduce A/R aging and lengthy collection processes while enhancing patient satisfaction and retention, please contact us to learn exactly how we can help. We will be happy to discuss your challenges and detail how our services can help – you’ll quickly learn how you can improve your processes and ensure a profitable, streamlined revenue cycle.
