3 Ways to Drive Technology Success in Rev Cycle

One rev cycle leader provides three tips for success after investing in the digitalization of his organization's billing cycle.

With patients paying more for the cost of healthcare and treatment, the patient financial experience is more important than ever. This means the need for a seamless billing process has increased.

Lack of transparency in the billing process can make accessing and paying for care a stressful experience, one that can disengage patients from their providers James Rohrbaugh, CFO and treasurer for Allegheny Health Network (AHN), previously told HealthLeaders.

AHN recently invested in a patient billing solution that provides patients with a connected financial experience integrating their payer, provider, and financial institution all in one place.

“It was clear to us that the patient billing process is broken, and that providers and payers alone can’t solve the systemic challenges,” Rohrbaugh explained.

AHN, alongside Highmark Health, implemented a financial engagement platform which uniquely allows them to integrate patient’s claims and explanation of benefits data between the AHN providers and Highmark members.

For revenue cycle leaders considering digitalization efforts in their own organizations, here are three ways to ensure success with revenue cycle technology solutions.

Partnership

Organizations should look for vendors with expertise and shared interests.

“Finding a vendor that understood consumer preference and understood it in other industries as well as the healthcare industry was important to our success,” Rohrbaugh said.

Incentivize

Develop key performance indicators where both parties are incentivized to achieve results.

“The success of it is measured by the results and both parties, the vendor and the provider in this case, both share [in it] and the improvement seen from the process.”

Review

Both parties should review the results and implement changes as needed.

 “We use a monthly cadence of meetings where we look at the analytics from the process and we say what’s working well, what’s not working well, what can we change, and what can we do differently.”