Meetings with individual accounts receivable staff can be a valuable tool to improve revenue cycle management performance, according to Susan Eilman, senior healthcare consultant at Wellesley, Mass.-based Hayes Management Consulting.
Ms. Eilman shared the following tip with Becker's Hospital Review.
"Not every member of your staff performs the same. Employees fall into low, medium and high performance levels and from my experience, holding one-on-one meetings with each accounts receivable staff member allows you to understand what issues they experience daily, provide development tools for them to reach to a higher level, and set goals to enhance productivity. Listening is the best tool to discovering issues you may not have known and hopefully these meetings will empower staff to work more productively once they know their issues are being heard.
"Once meeting with each staff member, compile all notes and place into categories. Categories can include system issues, insurance issues and employee issues. Review trends you observe and create a plan with your individual staff member to try to resolve them. Communicating resolved issues back to the individuals and following up with their issues sends a message that management supports their efforts and gives them an opportunity to continue to improve.
"Consider rewarding staff when goals are accomplished and positive influences to revenue have occurred. From my experience, setting up future monthly or quarterly meetings with each staff member continues the momentum you've developed with your team and their productivity."
Read more advice for improving RCM performance here.
If you would like to share your RCM best practices, please email Kelly Gooch at kgooch@beckershealthcare.com to be featured in the "RCM tip of the day" series.
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