Two healthcare CFOs recently discussed their top strategies for improving the intersection of revenue cycle and health IT during a panel titled, "The Best Ideas to Improve Health IT and Revenue Cycle Today." The session was part of Becker's Health IT + Revenue Cycle Virtual Event on Oct. 6. The CFOs were:
- Holly Yonemoto, CFO and CIO of San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital & Health Care District in Banning, Calif.
- Svetlana Pitman, CFO of Tucson (Ariz.) Orthopaedic Institute
Here is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity. To view the full session on demand, click here.
Question: What are your best ideas to improve health IT and revenue cycle today?
Svetlana Pitman: I have two. First, you have to leverage automation. If you can automate it, do it. This way, you will have more time to analyze the data you actually have. Second, use the data. You have to follow the numbers. We have eight excellent hip and joint surgeons. When we run dashboards for them by subspecialty, we can right away see if there are any outliers. And if there is an outlier, we can ask why, and if there is an issue we can solve it way before it actually becomes a bigger issue.
Holly Yonemoto: From the front end, the best idea for us was outsourcing because of our smaller size and billing department. Additionally for us, the best idea was getting a new EHR that has essentially automated our billing so that we can have the whole process measured. The community-model EHR has a lot of analytics to make reports on almost every element in the system. So not only from a clinical standpoint, can we look at the data, but from the process of our revenue cycle.