Revenue Cycle Outsourcing

Managing your revenue cycle is always a challenge. Along with quality of care, patient satisfaction and employee management – you must manage the financial end of things to remain successful. Often times, financial management is the piece that will slip through the cracks, proving to be detrimental to any practice or hospital.

A growing trend for many overloaded practices and hospitals is revenue cycle outsourcing. Not only will this greatly aid in sustaining a stronger cash position, it will alleviate many problems with personnel and technology. Outsourcing particularly proves its worth when a facility recognizes it is lacking the internal expertise to successfully and effectively manage their revenue cycle. This also allows staff to focus on what you find even more important – your patients.

Although revenue cycle outsourcing will solve many problems, it is still imperative that you are able to manage the outsourcing firm, meaning you will need to commit an internal resource manage this task. It is important that not only your outsourcing firm benchmark themselves, but also that you benchmark them - establishing specific and measurable targets for their performance. Agreement on clear goals will allow for a winning partnership between you and your outsourcing firm.

Visit http://www.thinkfirst.us/ to see how we can help you.

Analytics

At Think First, we recognize and embrace the value of analytics in healthcare. We offer a powerful analytics tool called Instant Informatics which I helped develop and continue to support. As our clients continue to attest, the key to the success of Instant Informatics is how easy it is to use.

Excel
Excel 2007 is our preferred reporting tool mainly because it is the lowest common denominator between users who are requesting reports and developers who deliver reports. Excel 2007 is versatile, graphical, easily printable and powerful - all important factors in our decision to utilize it heavily in our Instant Informatics product.

Pivot tables elevate Excel 2007 to the next level of usefulness, providing summary and drill-through information. Pivot tables can point to self-contained data (within the spreadsheet), relational data, or OLAP data, allowing analysis of small or very large datasets, all from the same end user perspective. The average Excel user can become proficient with our Instant Informatics pivots in less than 30 minutes too.

Dashboarding
The term “Dashboard” has become a commonly used term in analytics referring to a concise report that provides a quick and easy means to interpret KPI data. Some dashboards emphasize true dashboard-like "gauges" (like the gas or RPM gauge in your car) for easy understanding. Here at Think First, we provide our customized dashboards, including industry or other client-defined benchmarks, to designated client staff (often physicians, business managers and department chairpersons).

Trends in Dashboarding
While it is typically beneficial to see a high level view of KPI information, there is also often a need to quickly access the underlying details. An example is the physician whose dashboard indicates that his/her Work RVU's have decreased in the past month. A "drill-through" capability is required to assess the cause of the decreased Work RVU’s. Merely delivering the dashboard may not be adequate. While obtaining thorough dashboards with the “drill-through” data incorporated is typically difficult for clients, Think First has eliminated this challenge with Instant Informatics.

To learn more about our Instant Informatics solution, visit our website at: http://www.thinkfirst.us/instant-informatics/

-Eddie Sanders, Senior Consultant

10 Tips For Your IDX/GE Centricity Business System

1. BAR Payment Posting Action Code K (Reconcile UC Invoice) in Action Code Dictionary 10 can help move payments, such as co-payments, quickly and easily from within an account in one invoice to the same account in another invoice. It is most often secured-out with a security plus category; typically the security category either needs to be removed or updated to appropriate user profiles.
   


2. B-Global Actions Code within DBMS Enterprise Dictionary (Function 20) can contribute to dictionary maintenance by allowing fast actions and edits in maintaining dictionaries. It is controlled in Dictionary 47011.
   


3. Nightly Edit Evaluation can be significantly expedited by a simple parameter in Dictionary 33021. Most edits are re-evaluated nightly, even if they are not worked by the user. The Number of Days between Encounter Evaluation can help clients stagger the evaluation of edits. An ideal example of this is the Missing NPI Number edit.
   


4. Nightly Edit Evaluation can also be accelerated by reviewing the structure of workfile configuration. The use of “Include All” or “Exclude” options can have a major impact on how quickly the Nightly Edit Evaluation runs.
   


5. ETM can help automate many manual tasks such as FSC transfers & write-offs. To get the most from ETM, it is vital to start by identifying repetitive tasks that your staff is performing on a regular basis.
   


6. Prior to Version 3.0, claim form edits were free-text values. Dictionary 33202 now stores these entries, but many are repetitive and inconsistent. BAR Function 40, Activity 20 can help update these quickly and easily.
   


7. For Schedulers booking appointments for the same providers, location, or departments, the use of the default setting can save valuable keystrokes and time.
   


8. When utilizing Enterprise Index, many clients prefer to “hide” the weight values from users, as to not be misleading on which patient to select. However, there is no substitute for daily review of the Prevention Audit Trail Report to maintain accuracy.
   


9. BSYSGEN 654 can provide users with additional transaction-level detail for follow-up staff, as well as a selector-based format.
   


10. ETM can be utilized to create tasks of your own choosing and to provide “projects” for staff, as well as to automate actions and track productivity.

-Andrew McDevitt, Senior Consultant

Community

Compassionate care for all, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or income level, has been at the heart of The Hospital of Saint Raphael’s mission for more than 100 years. This tradition of caring continues today as the hospital seeks to serve the Greater New Haven, Connecticut, community with steadfast conviction and concern for all people - even in times of fiscal challenge and uncertainty.

I was lucky enough to witness this great tradition last week when JoAnn Germe, Clinic Nurse Manager, and the staff of the Pediatric Primary Care Center, held Saint Raphael’s annual drive for backpacks. The team assembled over 250 backpacks filled with school supplies for children who are less fortunate. “Today has been a day of smiles and happy times for the 250 children and their parents who arrived to pick up their backpacks,” said JoAnn in an email to volunteers who helped in the effort.

The staff of Think First eagerly assisted with organizing and filling the backpacks that were donated. I am very proud of our team for taking the time to support such a successful and meaningful event and we encourage others to join us in this worthy cause again next year.

Thanks to JoAnn and her team for allowing Think First to share in this event and more importantly, for making a difference in New Haven.

-Chris George

Compliance

Compliance is challenging for any medical practice, affecting nearly every facet of healthcare delivery. Among the myriad of rules and regulations that must be followed, the regulations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rank among the most vital.

Organizations continue to struggle with the administrative burdens of implementing and adhering to the requirements of the Medicare Secondary Payer and Advanced Beneficiary Notice. These can create an administrative overload, often resulting in bottlenecks during registration and frustrated patients who are pressed to answer countless questions.

Delays and impediments can be averted by seizing the opportunity to redesign patient workflow around these compliance requirements. Providing staff with the necessary training and tools is essential to staying on top of compliance issues. Don’t let these compliance issues be a burden – use them instead as opportunities to redesign and improve your patient experience. To find out more about how Think First can help you with compliance, visit our website, http://thinkfirst.us/lower.php?url=professional-services

-Kristen Weisenberger, Senior Project Manager

Check back soon for our first post.

Follow Think First: