5 Best Practices for Improving Hospital Revenue Cycle

The way patients select health plans, choose their healthcare providers and pay their healthcare bills has changed drastically over the last few years. To effectively manage the financial impact of these changes, hospitals must upgrade their Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) capabilities.

In case you are not sure about where to start? Here are a few easy and cost-effective ways in which you can elevate your revenue cycle game-

Individual Focus on Front-end and Backend Revenue Cycle Management Services:

Hospital revenue cycle management services is broken down into front-end and backend tasks. Patient information collection, insurance coverage and eligibility verification, and new patient registration are summed up as frontend functions. Claims and denial management, medical billing, and ultimate patient financial responsibility collection define backend functions. Any lag or inaccuracy in any of these tasks result into a significant impact on the overall hospital revenue cycle management services. It is critical that the administration break down the siloes between the backend and the frontend functions to determine scopes to improve and improvise, thereby improving the overall services.

Reliance on Data to Monitor Revenue Cycle Performance:

It is highly recommended that healthcare organizations keep a regular tab on clinical and financial data to devise and measure KPIs for revenue cycle performance. These KPIs should include cash collection as a percentage of net patient services revenue, net days in accounts receivable, final denial write-off as a percentage of net patient service revenue, claim denial rate, and cost to collect. Setting these KPIs will let the administration know exactly where to look at, identify areas that require greater focus, and make necessary improvisations. Ideally, tracking about five healthcare revenue cycle KPIs will help administrations to reach the stage to improve revenue cycle performance. These KPIs should also be shared with clinical and non-clinical staffs to motivate them to optimize expenditure and augment efficiency in their services.

Provide More Payment Channels:

In the digital world, ignoring the crucial role that consumer choice plays and providing them with just one avenue for making payment is a costly mistake that shows of incompetence. Presently what customers are looking for is the convenience of multi-channel payment options and unless you provide that it will be hard for you to meet your revenue expectations. Hence start augmenting your traditional payment option with online and 24-hour telephonic payment options.

Improve Price Transparency:

Improved price transparency is the need of the hour as healthcare organizations are realigning their revenue cycle management process flow with the recent wave of healthcare consumerism. Transparency can be achieved by providing price estimates before the point-of-service, rolling out easier payment options, and most importantly introducing automation in medical billing which will also allow providers to quickly collect their dues from patients.

Conduct Regular Audits:

Conducting regular audits helps you to identify the true strengths and weaknesses of your healthcare revenue cycle. Based on this understanding you can streamline the RCM processes and maximize efficiency.

Focus on Data Security:

Healthcare industry was always counted among the industry with the least number of data breached in the past. But the situation has turned around drastically in the last few years. In fact as per reports, the healthcare industry is head and shoulders above the rest with regards to data breaches in recent times. For instance consider the figures of the first half of 2015. During this period healthcare industry witnessed as many as 84.4 million record breaches, which is the highest among all the industries.

These findings are just a grim reminder of how vulnerable healthcare industry is currently and highlight the importance of why hospitals should focus on data security to make sure that their revenue cycle is not compromised.

Achieve Interoperability for Increased Efficiency:

EHR interoperability should be on the top of the list of priorities for healthcare organizations. This is because EHR interoperability enables seamless transfer of data among EHR systems and various health care stakeholders. It makes sure that the right data is available at the right time to the right people, thereby greatly improving the efficiency of your overall RCM process.

Utilize Technology:

EMR and other latest advancements in RCM tools have made it possible to automate cumbersome functions such as performing charge entry, claims edits and eligibility checking. Hence why bear the burden of carrying out these tasks in-house. Leverage the advancements in technology to get more time to focus on other business critical activities.

How We Can Help?

One of the easiest ways to reduce financial headaches of your hospital is by outsourcing revenue management services to a proficient third party service provider such as MedBillingExperts. By combining the power of our team, experience, knowledge, process, and technology we reorganize your revenue cycle model and make it more efficient, quick and adaptable.