Since May 2016, Ian Stewart has served as system vice president of revenue cycle at Chicago-based Presence Health, the largest Catholic health system in Illinois.
Prior to joining Presence Health, he was vice president of business systems, finance and operations at Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Medical Group for 14 years.
Mr. Stewart recently answered questions from Becker's Hospital Review about his greatest challenges as a revenue cycle leader and how he would improve the revenue cycle process.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Question: What's your favorite part about being a revenue cycle leader for a healthcare system?
Ian Stewart: The continued focus on enhancing revenue, improving process controls and business intelligence and providing a laser focus on driving efficiency in all revenue cycle operations would seem the obvious answer, but my favorite part of this work is being allowed to be of service to all the patients, associates and providers so that they can stay singularly focused on the care for our patients.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you're facing as revenue cycle leader?
IS: The changing landscape in Illinois and at the federal level is our biggest challenge. Keeping the teams trained and updated on the constant changes continues to be our largest ongoing challenge.
Q: What is one of your goals this year?
IS: Stabilize the ever changing environment for the employees and, though the work will be very hard, to make our goals and key result areas.
Q: What is one thing you'd do to improve the revenue cycle process?
IS: I would work hard with all involved within Medicare and Medicaid to simplify the certification, billing and coding systems. We could reduce billions of dollars of administrative costs to the system nationwide if we could accomplish this task.