Adopting Centralized Revenue Cycle Operations

Given their complexity, hospitals can't afford disjointed revenue cycle management across disconnected departments. This leads to duplicated efforts, gaps in oversight, and lack of accountability. Yet many hospitals still take a fragmented approach.

To increase efficiency and minimize issues, hospitals must centralize key revenue cycle processes under unified leadership and standards. Core measures include:

• Instituting centralized billing/collections teams and systems, rather than separate ones per department
• Developing organization-wide policies, procedures and protocols for key revenue cycle functions
• Designating a Revenue Cycle Director to develop strategy and oversee operations
• Creating a Revenue Cycle Committee with stakeholders from all departments to facilitate collaboration and communication
• Implementing organization-wide training to ensure staff follow standardized revenue cycle protocols

Centralizing core revenue cycle functions establishes clear accountability and consistency. However, don't force-fit all sub-processes into a one-size fits all model. Account for nuances between outpatient vs. inpatient billing or clinical department workflows.

Leverage centralized analytics for a big-picture view across access points. This enables data-driven decisions to optimize policies and staffing. Balance organization-wide standards with targeted solutions to improve departmental workflows. Centralized revenue cycle oversight unifies hospitals around best practices for optimal financial outcomes.

Making Insurance Eligibility Validation A Priority

Failure to verify patient insurance coverage and eligibility upfront jeopardizes hospital reimbursement. The high cost of services makes paying out-of-pocket impossible for most patients. Yet chaotic emergency admissions often prevent proper eligibility checks.

Making insurance verification a priority involves:

• Verifying active coverage, policy details, and payer information at first contact, such as ER admission or clinic visit
• Rechecking eligibility with payers at time of inpatient admission
• Confirming eligibility for specific planned procedures prior to treatment
• Following up again at time of discharge to catch any changes
• Updating online patient portals and registration systems in real-time

Automate validation steps within electronic workflows when possible. Leverage solutions that run 270/271 eligibility checks and provide accessible documentation.

Establish clear accountability for completing eligibility verification prior to treatment. Provide reference guides and training for staff at intake points. Set reminders to recheck status at key intervals, and before major procedures.

Confirm not just active coverage, but granular policy details impacting reimbursement - deductibles, copays, network restrictions, pre-authorizations. Catching eligibility red flags early prevents claim denial and protects hospital revenue.

Enabling Smooth Care Continuum Workflows

As patients move across the care continuum - ER, inpatient, outpatient services, rehab - their revenue cycle management can fall between the cracks. Transitioning between settings often involves handing off billing duties between different departments or even outsourced partners.

Fragmented hand-offs lead to steps getting lost, such as:

• Full charge capture for all services
• Translating clinical documentation into billing codes
• Obtaining pre-authorizations for out of hospital care
• Managing claim submissions and payment posting

Install standardized protocols for clear cut hand-offs as patients move between settings. Specify exactly who is accountable for fulfilling billing requirements in each direction – ER to inpatient, inpatient to rehab, clinic visit to surgery, etc.

Tighten up communication channels between departments to coordinate on shared patients. Ensure accurate and timely flow of billing information as custody shifts - treatment records, imaged intake forms, coding notes, charge sheets, etc.

Leverage centralized billing/collection teams when possible versus fragmented department staff. Shared access to billing systems maintains continuity as patients receive care across multiple hospital settings.

Smooth hand-offs prevent patients and their claims from falling through cracks between departments. It maintains consistent reimbursement workflows despite varied care settings.

Implementing Payer-specific Contracting

The heavy mix of payers at hospitals makes diligent contract management essential. Yet trying to negotiate and track generic contracts across all plans is ineffective. The “one-size-fits-all” approach leads to subpar payment rates and claim hassles.

For optimal terms and reimbursement, hospitals should initiate payer-specific contracts. This involves:

• Assessing top admitting payers and strategic priorities
• Developing contract frameworks tailored to each payer’s processes
• Negotiating rates, billing rules, discounts, and terms payer-by-payer
• Designating approved procedure codes, modifiers, and billing guidelines per contract
• Tracking key terms and expiry dates for each contract
• Updating hospital billing systems as new contracts take effect

While labor intensive, payer-specific contracts result in significantly higher, compliant reimbursement. Ensure contract tracking and details are accessible enterprise-wide to billing staff for accurate claim submission.

Provide training as new contracts roll out to prevent errors or outdated billing practices. Treat payers as true partners through contract planning - understand their priorities via data to structure mutually beneficial terms.

Ongoing payer contract management is crucial for hospital financial health. Don’t settle for vague, generic agreements when targeted contracts could earn millions in extra revenue.

Optimizing Staff Skills And Deployment

Like any operation, the capabilities and capacity of staff make or break revenue cycle effectiveness. Yet hospital billing departments often run chronically understaffed. Meanwhile untrained or inefficient legacy employees drain productivity.

Re-evaluating staffing models and prioritizing training helps optimize revenue cycle performance:

• Analyze billing workflows to identify capacity shortfalls and redundancies
• Benchmark key billing metrics (claims/collector, days in A/R) against industry averages
• Weigh outsourcing vs in-house staff to fill gaps cost-effectively
• Develop competency models and training plans for billing staff
• Implement productivity standards and monitors (e.g. claims filed per day)
• Cross-train employees for flexibility to fill gaps and support growth

Provide bonus incentives tied to productivity and accuracy metrics to motivate staff. Rotate lower performers through training programs before dismissal.

Nurture talent by offering advancement opportunities to top performers, along with ongoing team education. Update staffing levels and deployment regularly based on workflow volume and backlog data.

Right-sizing and elevating staff allows hospitals to get ahead of revenue cycles rather than perpetually lag behind. Never view staffing and training as “set it and forget it” activities.

Simplifying Patient Financial Services

Fragmented pre-registration, verification, benefit estimates, and point-of-service collections disrupt hospital revenue cycles. Patients become frustrated navigating disparate processes. Staff and systems don’t interface to share essential payer data upfront.

Consolidate these fragmented components into unified patient financial services to increase efficiency and revenue:

• Provide estimates of out-of-pocket costs prior to service based on benefits checks
• Secure pre-authorizations and accurate coverage verification in one workflow
• Offer packaged pricing/financing options for uninsured patients
• Collect point-of-service payments consistently across hospital settings
• Equip staff with real-time tools to verify benefits and payment liability during pre-registration
• Automate workflows for paperless pre-authorization requests and approvals

Smooth coordination between patient financial tasks reduces billing errors and post-discharge collections. Invest in enabling technologies like tablets that integrate eligibility verification, upfront payment collection, and benefit estimates at the bedside.

Patient financial services success requires collaboration between IT, patient access, financial counselors, and clinical departments. Break down silos to promote unified workflows and data sharing.

Harnessing Data Analytics

With increasing revenue cycle complexity, hospitals can’t manage by “gut feel.” Robust data analytics are now mandatory to pinpoint optimization opportunities.

Key measures to compile and analyze include:

• Denials rates by cause - identify most impactful denial sources
• Code distribution - uncovers improper under/over coding trends
• Days in A/R overall and by payer - signals collections gaps
• Bad debt and charity care levels - assess self-pay processes
• Appeal overturn rates - evaluate denial management efficacy
• Productivity by employee - monitor staff performance
• Claim corrections pre-billing - determine pre-validation effectiveness

Leverage reporting tools to automate analysis of trends rather than manual crunching. Build scorecards to track KPIs and quickly identify performance gaps.

Establish processes to turn data into action. Review reports in regular revenue cycle meetings to brainstorm improvements with managers. Implement targeted training to address coding gaps uncovered in audits. Pilot revised denial management workflows based on analytics.

Data-driven revenue cycle management prevents oversights and highlights exactly where and how to improve. Make analytics integral, not an afterthought. The numbers don’t lie – leverage them to take hospital revenue cycles to the next level.

Pursuing Integrated Revenue Cycle Technologies

Disjointed point solutions and lack of integration negatively impact hospital revenue cycle performance. Missing interfaces lead to time-wasting manual steps and gaps in end-to-end workflows.

Best practice hospitals take an enterprise approach to revenue cycle technologies:

• Identify functions needing tighter technology integration – claim management, clinical documentation, coding, etc.
• Vet platform choices based on breadth of built-in integration capabilities
• Define required interfaces between core systems like EHR, patient billing, ED, and payer claims
• Secure capabilities to participate in value-based reimbursement and quality reporting programs
• Structure system policies, user roles, and access controls for security and efficiency
• Phase upgrades to minimize revenue cycle disruptions and facilitate user adoption

Consider a single enterprise revenue cycle platform when feasible for full integration. But also plan for incremental modernization if current systems have different life cycles.

Develop long-term data exchange strategies across hospital IT systems to reduce dependence on one-off interfaces. This sustains unified workflows even as technologies come and go. With the right roadmap, modular platforms can still enable enterprise revenue cycle integration.

Strengthening Oversight And Controls

Complex hospital revenue cycles demand diligent governance and controls to minimize waste and abuse. Despite good intentions, gaps in transparency and accountability arise. Common issues include:

• Coding and billing errors increase when transparency decreases
• Staff productivity and competency gaps go unaddressed
• Duplicate payments or claims fall through the cracks
• Compliance risks around billing and documentation escalate
• Poor performing outsourcing partners continue without remediation

Implement layered oversight mechanisms to shine light across revenue cycle blind spots:

• Mandatory internal audits of provider documentation, coding accuracy, and claim quality
• External audits by third party consultants to validate processes objectively
• Data analytics with drill-down visibility to pinpoint optimization opportunities
• Regular department meetings focused on financial workflows and metrics
• Employee performance standards and competency reinforcement
• Routine audits and SLA monitoring for outsourced partners

Promote a culture focused on revenue integrity, compliance, and accountability at the leadership level. Oversight should facilitate continuous improvement, not punitive action. The more revenue cycle transparency hospitals build, the higher cash flows and lower compliance risk becomes.

Boosting Denial And Collections Management

Denials and unpaid balances impede hospital revenue integrity significantly. But too often denial management gets deprioritized. Common oversights include:

• Lack of accountability for recording, tracking, and appealing denials
• Failure to collect denial root cause data to prevent recurrences
• Minimal follow-up or tracking of outstanding receivables
• Outdated technology unable to automate complex denial workflows
• Culture of accepting denials rather than leveraging negotiating power

Effective denial and collections management involves:

• Establishing policies and KPIs for managing denials and unpaid claims
• Investing in integrated denial tracking and workflow automation tools
• Training staff on protocols to prevent denial root causes
• Appealing denials aggressively with supporting documentation
• Developing payer-specific contracts optimized to prevent denials
• Setting daily/weekly productivity targets for claims follow-up
• Maintaining accuracy of account status and documentation
• Analyzing aging receivables to prioritize most impactful for follow-up
• Utilizing pre-collection warnings and patient access limitations per policy

View denials and unpaid claims as revenue recovery opportunities, not an inevitable cost of doing business. The more hospitals invest in robust denial management and collections, the more earned revenue is actually realized.

Conclusion

Smoothly managing the revenue cycle is essential for hospitals to operate sustainably and fund their care mission. While extremely complex, hospitals can tap proven strategies to control revenue leakage, maximize legitimate reimbursement, and operate efficiently.

Strong leadership and governance are crucial to enforce standardized protocols across disconnected departments. Hospitals can’t afford blind spots or gaps in oversight. Compliance and reward structures should promote revenue integrity from the C-suite down.

Equally important is embracing enabling technologies and analytics. Integrated systems prevent patients and their claims from falling between the cracks. Data provides objective insights to strengthen weak links.

With these fundamentals in place, hospitals can overcome inherent revenue cycle challenges. Controlled efficiency replaces a chaotic scramble. Optimized systems enable staff productivity. And ultimately, hospitals secure the reliable, compliant funding they need to deliver on their vital community role. Use the strategies outlined here to boost revenue cycle performance to new levels of effectiveness.