Is Your Revenue Cycle Suffering? – Breakaway Thinking

This post is part of the Breakaway Thinking blog post series which is sponsored by Breakaway Learning Solutions, a Conduent Company.

Healthcare and specifically healthcare IT seems to be full of distractions. There has always been a lot of regulations in healthcare, but lately, it seems overwhelming. We’re just coming out of one of the most overwhelming distractions to hit healthcare, meaningful use. However, just behind it is MACRA. If you’re part of any healthcare IT organization, you are certainly all too familiar with the impact these regulations have had on your organization.

While each of these regulations is important to your organization, it is worth taking the time to step back and evaluate what areas of your organization might be suffering because you were distracted by meaningful use and now MACRA. One area that’s suffered from these distractions is revenue cycle management. The harsh reality is that when we lose focus on revenue cycle management, it suffers.

Along with losing focus on revenue cycle management, other things are causing organizations’ revenue cycle efforts to underperform. One example of this is the impact switching to an all-in-one EHR system has had on revenue. Many organizations understand that there are benefits to a tightly integrated all-in-one system, but in many cases, these organizations have found that the revenue cycle management in these all-in-one systems is inferior to what they were using previously.

In some cases, the new system is the problem and is causing revenue shortfall. In other situations, when the organization switched to the new revenue cycle management system they didn’t train the users effectively on the new system. So much focus is paid on training the doctors and nurses, it’s easy to see how your revenue cycle professionals don’t get the training they need. Properly training these people on the new system can pay big dividends on the revenue side of things.

Related to training, many healthcare organizations are finding it a challenge to retain their high-quality revenue cycle staff. When a new staff joins the organization, they also will often suffer from poor quality training which directly impacts the bottom line as revenue cycle suffers. Creating a consistent and structured program for training new staff on your revenue cycle management software is a great investment for every organization. Plus, it will help retain those new employees who want to stay with an organization who cares about making sure they’re well trained to perform their job.

No doubt revenue cycle management is only one area that’s suffering amidst all of the regulations and distractions we experience in healthcare IT. Take the time now to sit down and understand what areas of your organization could benefit from some added attention, focus, and training. You’ll be surprised at the opportunities available to improve your organization similar to what’s described above for revenue cycle management.

Learn more about the Breakaway Thinking blog series sponsor, Breakaway Learning Solutions, and download their FREE whitepaper “Leadership Insights: Gaining Value from Technology Investments.”

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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