Revenue cycle management in healthcare is the foundation of the entire organization. All the facilities and services provided to the patient require a great deal of funding. An optimized revenue cycle management can improve the level of services provided to the patient. Hence it is essential that you try and resolve the revenue cycle management issues you might be facing.
Especially after the pandemic, many payers have changed their ways of reimbursing claims. Due to this, various challenges have become noticeable. It involves staff-level challenges along with concerns about the data. Denial management and patient outstanding will always remain a point of concern.
Let’s understand each point of revenue cycle management issues in detail and then conclude with effective solutions to tackle them.
Staff Shortage
After the pandemic, one saw a visible amount of shortage in skilled staff. This directly affected the efficiency of the team. May faced challenges when it came to billing staff, and this resulted in a decrease in revenue. Due to this, the healthcare providers tried to find alternatives or solutions so that the staff shortage does not impact the revenue. Especially in the years of the pandemic, this has been seen as one of the major revenue cycle management issues.
One best solution that was implemented by many healthcare facilities is upgrading themselves and using advanced tools that will help them keep proper records and smoothen the process of billing. The automated tool can reduce the dependency on humans visibly. It will also lessen the workload and make the process easier for the existing staff. This has proven to be effective for the revenue cycle in medical billing.
You can also opt for virtual staff. This will not only help you with payrolls but will also help you eliminate the billing staff shortage. This will also provide a great work-life balance to the employees as well. But this can have challenges of its own. Hence you can opt for the following solution.
Over the years, many have opted to outsource revenue cycle management in healthcare. This not only lessens your burden but trusting an expert will give you optimized results in your revenue cycle management.
Need to Increase Profit Margin
In the past years, revenue cycle management in healthcare organizations has seen lower profit margins. Therefore they are putting efforts to stabilize themselves for future growth. Overlooking this revenue cycle management issue will only be a setback.
There are ways you can improve your collections. Initially, start with having clear visibility into financial and staff performance. After that, thoroughly analyze where you can adapt to modern technology. This will fasten your outputs and minimize your write-offs.
You can also check out the possibility of getting equity investors. This will surely help you get what you require for growth. Another option is Mergers and Acquisitions. Either of these can provide enough scope for enhanced growth. However, these require proper policies that deliver good treatment and measures like developing new staffing models and shifting patients to outpatient services.
Data Processing from Disparate Systems
Not having a proper insight into the data would be your biggest failure. Any negligence in this will make it hard for you to be able to analyze the financial performance, and neither would you be able to discover loose ends, if there are any. This will cause a huge depression in your revenue. Therefore it is important that you start practicing to keep proper insights into the data. Use the required tools and processes to have improved and accurate data insights.
Automated workflows and other such solutions are seen as perfect solutions for acquiring clear data insights. So make sure you incorporate them.
Self-Service Methods Improve Patient Experience
One of the major struggles seen is collecting money from patients. Especially the years of the pandemic have seen a huge amount of healthcare bills. According to several reports, it took an average minimum of 3 months for healthcare services to get reimbursement from the patient.
Self-services is a topic that has heightened during the pandemic. It involves apps or portals that enable patients to log in and complete the required paperwork. It has become an easy means through which patients can check and pay their balances. This has also helped them get the appointments in advance, making it an easy way out for various processes. This is one of the most effective ways of overcoming major revenue cycle challenges.
Conclusion
Though there are various revenue cycle management issues, the point is that you are trying to resolve them. By reading the above points, you might have an idea of what measures you can take to optimize your process.
