Prioritizing Accounts Helps Sanford Health Lift Patient Payments by $2.1M
Scoring and segmenting patients according to their propensity to pay, combined with using an automated dialer, can significantly improve the productivity of patient account teams.
Contracting With Physicians to Tackle Pervasive Challenges
Hospital efficiency improvement programs allow organizations to address quality and efficiency goals across service lines by providing all inpatient-focused specialties with financial rewards if they achieve specific outcomes.
How CMS Leveled the Playing Field for Hospital Readmission Penalties
A new rule finalized by CMS acknowledges that charging hospitals with higher percentages of dual eligibles the same readmission penalties as hospitals with fewer of these patients. The proposed penalty adjustment will reflect the challenges facing each hospital's populations.
Critical Access Hospital Makes Transparency a Priority
Henry County Health Center has simplified patient billing and added a patient estimator tool to enhance the patient experience and improve collections.
Moving Toward a Revenue Ecosystem
To maximize results, healthcare finance leaders should establish an integrated view of the organization’s entire revenue ecosystem, aligning across organizational strategy, payer contracting, clinical operations, and revenue cycle drivers.
Compliance Analytics: There’s Gold in the Data
Compliance can become a financial asset. For example, data mining provides opportunities to improve vague or incomplete clinical documentation, weak internal communication, overly conservative or inconsistent coding, and physician education, all of which improve the bottom line and reduce risk.
Using Stakeholder Input to Design Healthcare Facilities
Using a Lean design process, Lee Health created a life-size mock-up of clinical and administrative facilities to optimize patient flow and staff flow before drawing the designs for a new outpatient facility.
Health System Develops Productivity and Quality Standards for Remote Employees
Texas Health Resources revenue cycle leaders measure productivity for remote workers by evaluating the daily number of accounts employees secure for insurance authorizations and pre-registrations.
Texas Health Resources Work-from-Home Program Increases Productivity, Employee Satisfaction
Since 2013, the health system has allowed more than 300 revenue cycle staff members to work from home. Employee evaluations show that remote workers perform at 113 percent productivity, while staff working in the office perform at 108 percent of the expected productivity level.
Hospital Requirement to Provide Auxiliary Communication Aids Continues
An appellate court ruled hospitals must continue to provide appropriate auxiliary aids to help hearing impaired patients exchange medical and financial information with hospital staff.