10 Ways to Improve Your Revenue Cycle
1) Educate and work with the staff. Educating and continually training staff is essential in submitting claims properly, providing good customer service, and decreasing errors. All of which can improve an organization’s revenue cycle.
2) Form an efficient organizational structure. Structure and standardized processes will ensure best practices are consistent within an organization. Striving to achieve leaner processes can also reduce waste, increase patient satisfaction and prove to provide a positive effective on an organization’s revenue cycle.
3) Set goals and monitor performance. As the saying goes, “What gets measured get done”. Setting goals and monitoring progress of achieving those goals increases probabilities of success. Incentivizing goal achievements can also help an organization achieve their goals and improve its revenue cycle.
4) Automate prior authorizations and eligibility. Submitting authorizations prior to delivered care is on the rise. But automated submissions which is more cost-efficient than the manual way has not become general practice yet. The 2016 CAQH Index shows electronic authorizations cost significantly less than manual authorizations. Providers and revenue cycle managers agree that automated prior authorizations can save time and money, yet another way to improve an organization’s revenue cycle.
5) Collect patient financial responsibility upfront. “Late and underpaid patient financial responsibility slows healthcare revenue cycles.” Considering patients responsibility to pay their medical expenses has increased, post care recovering payments, contacting, and collecting from patients can add to the already assumed burden of an organization. “Revenue cycle managers can optimize patient collections by implementing point of service collections and credit-card-on-file options. If organizations communicate costs to patients prior to service and utilize modern payment collection strategies, such as credit-card-on-file they can experience a reduced accounts receivable and an improved revenue cycle.
6) Make sure claims are clean and systems are set up optimally. To reduce rejected claims an organization must ensure they are using current and correct codes, properly submitting claims, and monitoring their billing system. These efforts will reduce accounts receivable and improve the revenue cycle.
7) Reduce denials and underpayments. Medical Necessity requirements for reimbursement seem to be ever changing. It is important that organizations have real-time information to comply and maximize recovery for services. If not, not only do they risk being underpaid but also risk spending more “money on the back-end trying to collect revenue (or contest denials) with a low probability of return if the front-end process was not handled correctly”.
8) Reduce out-of-network revenue leakage. It is important when developing a network, that you have a practice that offers many services. If an organization does not, it creates an opportunity for its patient to go out-of-network for needed services. Organizations that coordinate care and carefully integrate their network reduce their patients being sent out-of-network for care and improve their revenue cycle.
9) Optimize revenue from physician referrals and orders. Facilities that can find a way to make themselves accessible, cheaper, and convenient to independent physicians to send their patients to them can capture revenue from the referred patient thereby increasing their revenue cycle by not having to “hire the physician or buy their practices”.
10) Establish processes and use tools that improve revenue cycle efficiency. Standardized processes reduce error potential. Less errors, mean more accurate data allows for better organizational forecasts. Less errors also reduces double work that increases operating costs and presents the opportunity for an organization to be proactive and not reactive. When accurate information is present, provided, and communicated, its ripple effect will be overall improvement.
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/four-ways-improve-hospital-revenue
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/5-best-practices-for-improving-revenue-cycle.html
https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/4-key-ways-to-improve-healthcare-revenue-cycle-management