Top 10 Revenue Cycle Management Initiatives

We know revenue cycle teams are very busy and often managing competing priorities.

So what are their top initiatives today? A recent survey of 93 senior healthcare finance executives provides some insight.

According to the survey from Connance and Porter Research, senior healthcare finance executives are more likely to implement updated IT and hire additional staff than contract with outside consulting services in order to optimize revenue cycle workflows.

Below are the key survey findings:

1. Revenue Cycle teams are very busy

Revenue cycle teams have an average of 14 top priority initiatives.

2. The top 10 initiatives at large health systems include:

• Preventing denials and underpayments
• Lowering total cost to collect
• Increasing collection rate among insured patients with balance after insurance responsibility
• Managing bundled payments
• Collecting more patient balances at point of service
• Lower the cost to collect patient balances
• Identifying uninsured patients likely to qualify for financial assistance
• Calculating patient liability prior to or at point of service
• Improve patient registration data and eligibility accuracy
• Improving patient utilization of online payment options

Note: Large health systems are defined as organizations making more than $350 million annually in net patient revenue.

3. The top 10 initiatives at small health systems are similar. They include:

• Preventing denials and underpayments
• Resolving denials and underpayments.
• Collecting more patient balances at point of service
• Lowering total cost to collect
• Increasing collection rate among insured patients with balance after insurance responsibility
• Increasing collection rate among uninsured patients
• Calculating patient liability prior to or at point of service
• Analyzing denial and underpayment trends to find patterns
• Lower the cost to collect of patient balances
• Improving efficacy of financial assistance efforts

Note: Small health systems are defined as organizations making less than $350 million annually in net patient revenue.

4. More than 40 percent of respondents believe the path to lower the cost to collect (both overall and patient-related) is within the organization and through IT implementation

5. To improve denials and underpayments, 51 percent of respondents expect to leverage new technology to address the performance gap.

 If you are a healthcare executive tasked with any of these initiatives, be sure to contact us to learn how PMMC can help.