Olajimi Amos -Blog

1.      Critical analysis (made for public) of bundled payments. Bundled payments drives increased savings and efficiency if its clearly designed appropriately. I believe state governments can take the lead in creating policies that around bundling that help drive cost down. The issue here is the data capture over time can be skewed with rural and urban patient population. State governments truly have the ability to impact costs of care using bundling.

2.      Become an e-member (student) of HFMA (online), watch an on-demand webinar (of your choosing) and write a summary & application piece

Estimated Operating Costs

TD Activity Based Costing methodology to our operative costing strategy. Time driven activity-based costing (TDABC) is a methodology that calculates the costs of healthcare resources consumed as a patient moves along a care process. Central to the problem of escalating health care expenditure is the lack of understanding of how much it costs to deliver patient care. Focusing solely on patient care but also educating all participants, including patients, physicians, employers, insurance companies, and the government need to recognize that value should be defined as a given health outcome per dollar of cost expended while also finding ways to make care affordable. Resources such as personnel, equipment and supplies associated with each step are been identified. A per minute cost for each resource expended has been generated, known as the capacity cost rate, and multiplied by its time requirement per task. The total cost for an episode of care should be obtained by adding the cost of each individual resource consumed as the patient moved along a clinical pathway

3.      Critical analysis of the link between patient experience and financial performance

Driving improvements in the service-profit chain-Employees are an important link in the service-profit chain, and they’re at the heart of the customer experience. Please review link below to show how engaged health care workers impact patience experience which in turn impacts profitability. Do see the graph of the service profit chain in the link below.

https://www.visioncritical.com/employee-satisfaction-service-profit-chain/

Olajimi Amos-Blog

A “top-ten list of:

1. Ways to improve revenue cycle
2. How to improve patient engagement in their own healthcare

Revenue Cycle Best Practices Top 10

1. Cash is King.

   Cash on hand allows health care facilities operate with minimal appetite for raising funds at high interest rates. They can pay for basic supplies or immediate emergency expense that come up.

2. Billing Quality/Faster billing cycle time:-

  it is important to have a goal/play book on billing quality. It means a health care facility can define a parameter for payment. Making sure all areas they control are updated within 1-3 days. examples such as Doctors notes and lab updates been finalized within a day then sent to billing then sent to insurance companies the next day. This allows for a quick turnaround on revenue.

3. Payment terms with suppliers/contractor services. Keeping longer payment terms does help with cash flow. Net 30 days to 120 days simply means making agreement terms with suppliers to pay them 30 to 120 days after service is complete. These gives the CFO flexibility/room to manage revenue cycle diligently.

4. Keeping operational costs low is vital for profitability. Finding ways to pay for a deal (low prices) for quality supplies 

5. Using technology as a competitive advantage

6. Having a Learn, adapt and improve culture where continuous improvement is a DNA of your health care facility

7. Outsource complex processes such as Bad debt/claims. Focus on your core competency which is your practice and providing quality care to patients 

8. Benchmark the best Revenue cycle agencies/ health care facilities and identify methods and ways to capture their best practices

9. Train your Billing associates on new ways for them to be efficient

10. Listen to your staff. They have ideas to improve billing. Capture them and review what can be implemented and for those that are not implemented have discussion with your staff team on why their idea was not implemented.

How to improve patient engagement in their own health care.

1. Know what your insurance company care, coverage and preferred doctors are in your area. Doing this minimizes exposure to costly care

2. Locate a primary care doctor.

3. Identify Emergency room or urgent care nearest to you and have an emergency plan

For out of state and out of country visits. An example is purchasing health insurance during foreign travel.

4. Exercise 

5. Pay attention to your body any immediately share any abnormal concern with your primary care physician

6. Use tele-medicine if available for extreme cases where 2nd opinions are needed

7. Rainy day fund-Save some extra money for any health emergencies 

8. Make sure your health electronic records are transferable to help with minimizing redundant tests

9.Enroll in local employee health awareness during open enrollment season

10. Know your family health genetic history.

Putting the service profit chain in Health care to work

Employee Entitlement and poor patient service trends

-Investing in patient experience is very important. Many nurses and front line workers are increasingly taking this for granted. Since the burden of malpractice is not a concern but our front line workers simply can make or break the patient loyalty and also impact the bottom(profitability).  Health care facilities have to invest in training , emotional intelligence and front line development.

The service profit chain model does elaborate on this topic in detail.

https://hbr.org/2008/07/putting-the-service-profit-chain-to-work

Ways to Reduce cost

1. There are many unnecessary care that can be eliminated

2. Practice preventive care by visiting your primary care doctor instead of waiting till an emergency

3. Use of technology to reduce the overhead of many health care providers

4. Decrease expensive drug costs. Medicare and Medicaid have been front and center in negotiating drug rates. Bulk purchase of drugs can help mitigate the expensive rise in drug cost.

5. Continuous investment in research and development.

6.