When Amy Crouch, CFO of Noblesville, Ind.-based Riverview Health connected with Becker's on Nov. 19, she had just hit the 90 day mark in her new role. With a background in healthcare finance, and even starting her own CPA firm during the COVID-19 pandemic, her immediate focus at Riverview Health is clear: strategic growth and revenue cycle improvement.
"The top priority is revenue cycle, digging into denials and coding, and partnering with the commercial insurance plans to ensure that we're providing them with the information they need so we can get paid appropriately and accurately," Ms. Crouch said. "Every denial has a code, and we are sorting and prioritizing denials by payer and code, to learn what we can do to improve on how we're submitting claims to get accurately paid."
Riverview Health, an independent, community-based health system, comprises two hospitals, Riverview Health Noblesville (Ind.) Hospital and Riverview Health Westfield (Ind.) Hospital. It also encompasses14 primary, immediate and specialty care facilities, according to its website.
Another system goal is to improve upon the 36% physician growth it saw in 2024 by growing an additional 25%. Riverview started 2024 with 47 physicians and 25 advanced practice providers, and will finish 2024 with 58 physicians and 40 APPs.
"Growth is growth, but we have to make sure it's the right growth," Ms. Crouch said. "We have to make sure that when we hire surgeons, our market share supports the volume. We have an incredible primary care base, so that is very attractive to support surgical growth."
Ms. Crouch said that the secret sauce to physician recruitment and retention is transparency and honesty.
"When I recruit a physician, I tell them the good and the bad," she said. "'Here are positives and here are struggles. Here are opportunities.' I don't just want to recruit any physician, I want to make sure it's the right physician. I want them to feel the same way."
Looking to the future, Ms. Crouch pointed to drug costs, supply expenses and rising salaries to stay competitive as financial headwinds for healthcare. She also pointed to Mark Cuban's cost-plus pharmacy model as an inspiration for transforming healthcare toward greater transparency.
To do this, Ms. Crouch said a strong cost-accounting system of reporting is needed to understand what the pieces actually cost, from equipment and drugs to people and the facilities, and then determining what the markup needs to be for a sustainable margin.
"I believe we can transform healthcare," she said. "I believe we can get to a cost-plus health system, and in that way the patients have full transparency, insurance companies have full transparency, and employers have full transparency. When that happens, it will take out the finger pointing."