Improve productivity in your revenue cycle management process

Manual processes can hamper employee productivity and satisfaction, while negatively affecting the revenue cycle. These processes also impact patients and their entire care journey. Patients don’t want to be burdened with confusing paperwork, preferring smooth processes and helpful staff encounters.

With revenue cycle automation tools, employees can improve productivity as data tracks important key performance indicators (KPIs). During an Oct. 26 webinar, Dawn Lunde, senior director of sales engineering at Inovalon (Provider business unit, Ability Network), Tony Rinkenberger, revenue cycle executive and management consultant at Innovo Advisors, and Derek Shaw, president of Invicta Health Solutions, shared ways to empower staff members and patients by harnessing technology in the revenue cycle management process.

1 Envision productivity as a journey

When healthcare leaders say they want to improve productivity, the goals change as an organization improves its processes and tools. Furthermore, productivity can only be measured if the organization knows what’s important for its revenue cycle. Leaders should identify what to measure and how to measure it, which avoids guesswork when determining overall and daily goals. Without metrics and specific targets, companies tend to go from crisis to crisis. Data helps an organization reward good work and know if it’s making progress on its KPIs.

2 Gamification drives results

Gamification, such as non-monetary rewards and team-oriented competitions, can motivate employees. KPIs can be anything from how many accounts were adjudicated or paid in a specific timeframe, to how many patients were helped and patient satisfaction scores. Rely on supervisors to come up with rewards as they will best know what inspires their team to move the performance needle.

3 Front-line staff has the answers

To improve processes, ask front-line staff members about their bottlenecks and where problems are simmering. Then give them the tools or technologies to improve those processes or brainstorm with them possible solutions. Monitoring an employee’s keystrokes, taking screenshots and walking through a process with them can also be eyeopening.

4 Employees: automation won’t take your job

Automation tools can enrich the patient experience. As a result of more automation, employees can spend more time interacting with and helping patients with registration, check-in, billing questions and more. Additionally, employees will feel they’re adding value and using their nuanced decision-making abilities. Moreover, automation tools usually have more capabilities than are used. Trainers and IT staff should continually check with users to see how technology can help replace manual workflows, so employees can focus on value-added tasks. Once staff members are comfortable with the baseline technology, they can be given more training to use it for other tasks, helping patients and themselves.

5 Revenue cycle is part of the care process

Good revenue cycle management is part of the patient experience, as equal importance to providing quality care. Offering a positive revenue cycle experience involves a facet of solutions such as providing a tool that estimates the patient’s financial responsibility. Staff members can also ask the patient how they’d like to pay for their care during the scheduling or pre-registration process. That way, patients can come to the visit focusing on the clinical side. This also improves the provider experience, as they don’t have to chase down payment on the back end.