The pandemic forced many revenue cycle workers to work from home, requiring hospitals and health systems to adapt quickly.
But, experts discovered that despite the challenges, many aspects of remote work not only went well, but improved based on multiple metrics.
The success of managing remote revenue cycle operations was featured during a roundtable discussion, sponsored by Grant Thornton, which occurred during Becker's 6th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Virtual Conference. Panelists were:
- Dan Angel, vice president, revenue cycle, Penn State Health
- Christopher Baratta, principal, healthcare transformation, Grant Thornton
- Cynthia Fry, PhD, senior vice president revenue, Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health
Four key takeaways:
- Productivity increased. Managers and administrators feared that remote work would reduce productivity, but the opposite happened. Productivity increased, which led hospitals to keep many employees remote permanently. "We didn't think we would see increases in productivity and quality, given that everyone was remote," Mr. Baratta said. This happened in a dynamic environment where systems were often changing. "We changed people's roles, processes and technology," Dr. Fry said.
- Employees responded to positive reinforcement. As in other industries, health systems quickly scrambled to set up employees to work from home, often in a week or less. Without the casual chitchat between employees and supervisors, positive feedback and recognizing individual contributors became much more intentional. The work of revenue cycle teams is critical to a health system's bottom line; reinforcing the message that revenue cycle employees are "essential workers" made a difference. "That really elevated how employees felt about their jobs," Dr. Fry said. Health systems also helped employees manage work-life balance when the office was suddenly their living room. "You needed to train them to establish boundaries between their home life and work life. And encourage breaks, getting up and walking, mental health," Dr. Fry said.
- Teams adapted well. At Jefferson Health, employee surveys conducted a month after everyone began working remotely — and again a year later — indicated increased satisfaction. The top response to a question about work-from-home challenges was "nothing," Dr. Fry noted. Penn State Health conducted similar surveys. "After about 30 days [of working remote in 2020], about 80 percent of the staff said they were very comfortable working in that environment," Mr. Angel said. In the most recent survey, it was 85 percent.
- Recruitment, retention and onboarding practices had to adapt. Initially, health systems saw turnover decrease, but it has returned to normal levels. This presented challenges for some. For others, it was a boon. "Smaller rural health systems could grab talent they had never gotten before," Mr. Baratta said, because the applicant pool for employees was bigger with remote work. As the talent pool became more dynamic, health systems had to be innovative about recruitment of revenue cycle employees. Offering referral and sign-on bonuses, going to job fairs, making it clear up front that a job was remote and recalibrating wages based on the market were key. "The pandemic forced organizations to look at, 'Are we paying the appropriate wages for the types of quality staff we have in the revenue cycle?'" Mr. Baratta said. For new employees, organizations have had to adapt their onboarding processes while still conveying their culture.
To learn more about the event, click here.