Tracking employee effectiveness allows you to reward your high performers & hire top talent from anywhere
COVID has taught us one thing – it’s that we have to send people home. Six months ago I spoke at an MGMA show and I asked the audience how many have sent their entire business office home? A few hands went up. Then I said, how many have not sent anyone home? Quite a few hands went up. I spoke recently at three trade shows and almost the entire room with the exception of two or three hands have sent everybody home or intend to send everybody home.
We have a culture now of working from anywhere. I used to travel every week for 18 years, and while I miss the airline miles and the hotel points, I don’t miss the lifestyle implications. We’re still doing business. In fact, we’re doing more business and better business by not having to travel. The workforce has changed. If you are trying to recruit top talent, you have to have a remote workforce policy in place, and allow people to work from home. That also means you have to measure their effectiveness in real time and your PM/EMR system cannot do it.
Integrate Effective Intelligence with your PM/EMR systems to track employee effectiveness
In over 22 years in healthcare revenue cycle consulting and software development, I’ve designed four workflow automation systems that look at employee effectiveness. The reason I’ve had to design four is because the PM/EMR companies out there don’t focus on measuring employee and revenue cycle effectiveness. They don’t focus on measuring the chatter that goes back and forth throughout a revenue cycle to get the outcome you expect. They have been too busy competing on the EMR side, and now they are focused on patient engagement. Who gets left behind in the revenue cycle? The employees who drive the margin for the services that you deliver. Now you have a remote workforce. Not only you have no way to measure everyone’s at home.
MedEvolve clients demand higher margins, and are maintaining margin with lean, effective staff. When they bill a dollar and they expect 97 cents back, they are getting 97 cents back. When that doesn't happen, they know why and what to do about it in seconds.
You need to have the right software in place that measures the effectiveness of employees. We call it Effective Intelligence and we’ve designed quotients (EiQ) that are designed to look at not only revenue cycle effectiveness, but more importantly, the employee effectiveness. Why is that important? Because my clients are demanding higher margins, and are maintaining margin with lean, effective staff. When they bill a dollar and they expect 97 cents back, they are getting 97 cents back. When that doesn’t happen, they know why and what to do about it in seconds. So, in order to have a successful, remote RCM staff, you need to be able to measure every unit of work that you are paying them to do, measuring the outcome they are getting, and benchmarking what the ideal outcome should be in each situation.
With employee effectiveness metrics, you can identify, reward, and retain top performers
So when you have the software integrated to your PM system that can actually tell the story of effectiveness for every RCM employee, you also have the ability to incentivize performance. In our own medical billing department, we’ve created an incentive-based revenue cycle, so when our employees deliver the outcome we expect with the work effort that’s acceptable, they can get financially rewarded. There are many different ways you can reward staff for getting the outcome, but the key is, can you measure them? Saying the whole team won is an option, but identifying and rewarding individuals that won by a lot helps to retain your top talent since they were really the ones that were driving the performance of the group. You have to be able to recognize the drivers.
Workflow automation helps to recession-proof your RCM staff and maximize your margins
It’s hard to find staff right now, and in 6 to 12 months when the recession hits and the economy worsens, imagine how hard it will be to find effective people. You will have more people looking for jobs, and if you don’t have a real time, objective way to measure and incentivize your staff, your margin will suffer. Start planning for that now. I’ve got quite a few large clients that have incentive-based revenue cycle programs. They have ways in which an individual making $20 an hour can add to their wages accretively just for doing the job, getting the resolution the first time, and minimizing the touches on a claim.
About Matt Seefeld
Matt Seefeld, Executive Vice President at MedEvolve, brings over 24 years of management consulting experience in the healthcare industry. He has extensive expertise in the assessment, design and implementation of process improvement programs and technology development across the entire revenue cycle. Matt began his career with Stockamp & Associates, Inc. and worked for both PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Deloitte Consulting LLP in their healthcare and life sciences practice lines. In 2007, he developed a business intelligence solution and founded Interpoint Partners, LLC, where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In 2011, he sold his business to Streamline Health Solutions where he then served as Chief Strategist of Revenue Cycle followed by Senior Vice President of Solutions Strategy until 2014. Matt ran global sales for NantHealth and provided consulting services for healthcare technology and service businesses nationwide, prior to joining MedEvolve full-time.
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