Six health system CFOs and RCM leaders shared with Becker’s Hospital Review their biggest goals for this year.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
1. Jenni Alvey, CFO of Indianapolis-based IU Health: "One of our goals this year is to align with our best payer partners to try to remove unnecessary barriers at the time the patient is visiting us, and instead take that same [time] we'd spend trying to get authorized and use that to better educate our physicians on things that might not be geared toward population health. To redeploy the resources that we use today — arguing with the payers — into actually aligning our incentives to together get better population health for our patients."
2. Aaron Eichorn, CFO of University Health System in Shreveport, La.: "Imagine someone sold milk in a grocery shop and you told them, 'Five percent of the milk bottles you sell you're not going to get paid for.' A grocer would look at you like you're nuts. If you provided somebody with a bottle of milk, of course you should get paid. Yet in healthcare we struggle with the denial rate. So one of my goals is we want to have a 20 percent improvement in our denial rate this year, despite Medicaid expansion. Even though the workload on my team has almost doubled this year, we want to improve our denial rate."
3. Sarah Knodel, system vice president of revenue cycle for Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health: "Continuing to improve the revenue cycle patient experience. While we have made strides in different areas related to the financial experience, the key for us is being able to string everything together in a more cohesive manner from scheduling to post-discharge collections. So many industries have a simple, yet robust way of engaging and interfacing with their consumers, but in healthcare we still have a lot of opportunities for improvement in this area. We have various revenue cycle bolt-on technologies and patient portals that have all provided improvements in our overall process and experience, but we need to continue to focus on making further improvements."
4. Mark Norby, revenue cycle chair at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic: "One of my main goals is to improve service for our patients. One project we implemented is a simplified billing solution, which allows patients easy ways to pay their bill and/or set up payment plans. We've seen improvement in patient satisfaction after only the first month of production."
5. Brian Unell, vice president of revenue cycle for Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare: "One of my goals is to streamline integration from a revenue cycle standpoint as Piedmont Healthcare continues to grow. The speed in which our organization is growing necessitates these things be managed properly on the front end. With each integration comes a different set of challenges but our focus remains the same: doing our part to get us closer to a unified, hassle-free patient experience."
6. Nola Wyatt, vice president of revenue cycle for St. Louis-based Ascension: "Our primary goal is to fulfill on our promise of standardizing our operations to ensure consistent performance delivery and consumer experience to all."
More articles on healthcare finance:
Shuttered Oklahoma plans to reopen
Dallas hospital files for bankruptcy 3 years after opening
Southcoast Health's operating loss doubles as federal reimbursement declines