Every conversation I’m having now with clients and prospects focuses around labor staff issues – shortages, high turnover, demanding more salary, better hourly rates. Also, everybody wants to work from home. There is so much complexity regarding the cost side of managing a revenue cycle. So, how do you identify in real time where humans are having to get involved in the process? Because when humans get involved in the process, costs go up and your net revenue starts to decline which in turn impacts margin. I think everyone can attest that with no margin there is no mission and cash flow is a good thing. Why is this a challenge?
We can start answering questions in real time, like, What is your work effort rate? How many claims/charges get paid without a human touching it? We can’t know if we are just relying on practice management data. They are not capturing everything you need to measure every unit of work. When I look at views like this, it starts to provide real transparency in real time as to where I need to focus my effort to reduce my dependence on labor. If you look at the zero touch rate in this client above, for example, 50.6% of the charges that go out get paid without a human touch, but half of the charge require a human touch. You can see what percentage of work effort (4.6) is going to clearing the edits. Look at the refile visits rate (7.1%) and the denials (38.9%) in the screenshot above by certain physicians. What’s going on in financial clearance and in coding? What are we not doing right that a human is now having to correct and hopefully get paid what we are suppose to be paid in a reasonable amount of time. Look at the work effort into getting claims paid.
These are measurements that you need to have especially in this day and age where everyone wants higher pay and to work from home. So you have to reduce your labor dependence. We have to go back to the basics of profit margin. Automation is critical, but automation is not going to solve the human problem in its entirety. You will always have humans involved in a process within the healthcare revenue cycle. The key is to minimize that, but you can’t if you aren’t aware of where the breakdown is occurring.
A clean claim is one that leaves the office “clean” (without errors) and is paid timely. But how much work did the claim require before it left the office? A zero touch claim means no one needed to touch the claim before it left the office “clean” (without errors) and is paid timely. You cannot determine how much work effort was required on a claim – even a clean claim – without a workflow automation solution that measures every touch.
Zero Touch | Clean Claims | |
|---|---|---|
Work Effort | Workflow automation tells you how many claim “touches” from the back office were necessary to get paid | Can’t be tracked. Clean claims may still require “touches” from the back office before being sent to the clearinghouse. |
Responsibility | Front office patient financial clearance is responsible for over 50% of denials. Zero Touch Resolution Rate indicates that back office medical billing department spent no time processing the claim | Back office medical billing department may still be spending time and effort making sure these claims go out clean the first time and get paid |
Practice management systems have not and will not deploy the workflow automation and task management system solutions that capture all of the structured data necessary to measure each unit of work done by a revenue cycle FTE that you are paying money for. Twenty years ago when I started my career in revenue cycle management, I would have thought, yes, they would figure it out. Guess what? Here we are in 2022, and they still haven’t figured it out. That means you need to find workflow automation and task management that can sit on top of any PM system. Instead of using a limited data set from a practice management system and finding the right data that your staff can use to warrant the work they are doing, now you can actually measure the outcome or what we at Medevolve call “effectiveness.”
Interview with Matt Rolfes, CEO/CFO of MedEvolve sharing advice for healthcare leaders trying to maximize their revenue with a reduced staff.
To better empower & motivate revenue cycle teams, provider organizations must have a foundation of real time effective intelligence.
Matt Seefeld offers a specific example of how MedEvolve’s software has led to a remarkable drop in labor expenses & a surge in performance.
Revenue cycle processes & technology in physician practices that have traditionally produced an acceptable bottom line no longer deliver.
The ultimate goal for any revenue cycle is achieving a high zero-touch rate for claims requiring no intervention, lowering dependence on labor.
How can we can inspire our revenue cycle employees to be the best they can be at their jobs? Matt talks about strategies for RCM retention.
Attracting & retaining the best RCM talent in a competitive hiring landscape requires embracing new workforce models in healthcare.
Reduce RCM labor dependency with workflow automation, task management, & real-time analytics to increase margin.
Outsource your medical billing to us with over 20 years of revenue cycle experience incorporating Effective Intelligence in house.
Improve patient collection rates with account resolution services: call center, mobile engagement, payment portal & counseling.
Increase productivity and visibility into front & back office processes while keeping your staff focused.
Interview with Matt Rolfes, CEO/CFO of MedEvolve sharing advice for healthcare leaders trying to maximize their revenue with a reduced staff.
To better empower & motivate revenue cycle teams, provider organizations must have a foundation of real time effective intelligence.
Matt Seefeld offers a specific example of how MedEvolve’s software has led to a remarkable drop in labor expenses & a surge in performance.
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