As healthcare facilities reorganize, re-engineer, or otherwise optimize their
revenue cycle management,
an unfortunate by-product is a
checklist of potentially hazardous
oversights encountered in the field.
A rural community hospital, for
example, experienced major cash
flow shortages that turned out to
be due in large part to attempting
to implement a multimillion dollar
healthcare information management
(HIM) system replacement without
adding any staff. IT and non-IT
employees alike were performing
critical work as mere add-ons to
their already full schedules.
The hospital failed to appreciate
how broad and deep the effects on
the entire revenue cycle would be. It
could have avoided a great deal of the
resulting problems by implementing
a recognized best practice. For such
a major transformation, the hospital
should have estimated the number of
full-time equivalents—IT and non-IT—
that the work items represented, and
then, as nearly as practical, dedicated
that number of staff members,
full-time, to the changeover.
Holistic Approach Is Prescription
for Revenue Cycle Ills
BY ANDREW MASINI, SENIOR MANAGER &
PATRICIA HENNELLY, DIRECTOR, COHNREZNICK ADVISORY GROUP
