One of the challenges of improving a hospital's revenue cycle management strategies is determining how to tackle the issue from a staffing point of view. According to a report by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) called "Strategies for a High-Performance Revenue Cycle," two different teams can be an asset to improving revenue cycle management (RCM):
The first is the oversight team. This includes executives with a stake in the success of revenue cycle initiatives, like a CFO or COO. With the guidance of an experienced oversight team, projects can be effectively communicated to other senior decision makers, from board members to the CEO.
The second team is the projects team. These are the professionals employed to manage the rollout of strategies on the ground.
"These teams focus on a specific area of the revenue cycle or are specially created to address a particular issue or task, such as managing response to a new software implementation," explains the HFMA report. "Regardless of whether the project-based team meets routinely or on a temporary basis, it generally includes participants from financial service areas as well as IT, physician relations, regulatory compliance, and/or clinical departments."
When these two avenues of implementation are well staffed, your organization can trust the effectiveness of various RCM strategy initiatives. Without the right delineation of responsibility, these efforts can prove complicated or unwieldy.
If your hospital, clinic, private practice, medical center or other care facility needs to improve revenue cycle management, contact Professional Medical Services today to learn more about the benefit of choosing to outsource receivables management. This reduces the burden on individual administrators to collect on outstanding claims, reducing the backlog in your caseload.
