A “top-ten list of:
- Ways to improve revenue cycle
- 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.
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