Although revenue cycle management appears to be a straightforward process, several necessary procedures help ensure timely payments. The money your facility relies on may be wiped out if there are coding errors, data duplications, or missing data. Hence, the success of your facility is dependent on the proper implementation of revenue cycle management.
Medical institutions employ revenue cycle management to handle claims processing, payment, and revenue-generating administrative and clinical aspects. Accordingly, patients’ service income is identified, managed, and collected.
You see, finances are critical to ensuring that healthcare organizations can continue to provide services to their patients. Profits are collected, and expenses are met through healthcare revenue cycle management (HRCM).
What is Revenue Cycle Management?
Health care providers can adopt a method known as revenue cycle management to manage the administrative and clinical aspects of their revenue cycle. The revenue cycle begins when a patient reaches out to make an appointment with the healthcare practitioner. Payments for appointments and treatments are collected at the end of a cycle.
The purpose of revenue cycle management is to find and fix any friction points in the revenue cycle of the provider concerned. Care providers can boost their revenue and collect reimbursements with efficient revenue cycle management.
What Role Does Revenue Cycle Services Play In The Healthcare Industry?
As expected, RCM is essential to the long-term success of any healthcare company. For a health care business, the revenue cycle consists of the following steps:
Claim Preparation: Patients’ information must be gathered before submitting a claim. Before the initial appointment, or on the day of operation in the case of anesthesia providers, this is common. There will also be a verification of the patient’s eligibility and insurance coverage.
Claim Submission: In this phase, the claim is created, charges are entered and classified, and the claim is sent to the patient’s insurer.
Claim Management: During and after the insurance company’s reaction, the claim is managed in this stage. Posting any applicable payments is also part of this service.
Receivables Collection: The patient’s payment (if applicable) is sought out and collected during this phase. Consequently, sending out statements and, if necessary, referring the bill to collections.
Analysis and Evaluation: Lastly, the billing team should gather and evaluate data from the RCM system.
For example, an RCM system can help reduce errors, boost payment chances and eliminate aging receivables. Additional goals include increasing claims efficiency and optimizing cash flow through cost-to-revenue reconciliation.
What Is The Significance Of RCM Healthcare Services?
For hospital-based medical specialties, the procedure from initial delivery to complete payment might be complicated. It’s not uncommon for this to result in a lengthy delay between service delivery and money collection. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and back-and-forth might be the worst-case scenario.
As a result, all health systems must deploy effective RCM. The RCM method is unique to each hospital service line, and the key is if they are well-considered, well-implemented, and take into account the subtleties of the specialization.
Because of how much patient data is involved in the revenue cycle, any mistakes could have significant legal (and, consequently, financial) repercussions on the company. Again, revenue cycle management is a vital tool for reducing the likelihood and severity of errors.
What Are The Advantages Of An Effective RCM Program?
An experienced third-party provider can offer substantial advantages to your hospital-based physician RCM. In particular, these advantages include:
Simplified Processes: Provide a secure and easy system to physicians, administrative personnel, coding specialists, and others with revenue touchpoints to improve the efficiency of your revenue cycles. Your employees will be less frustrated and confused if you have an excellent RCM system.
Improved Visibility: RCM’s ability to gain visibility is critical to its effectiveness. Your team can uncover problems and inefficiencies in the revenue cycle by expanding the visibility of the revenue cycle and analyzing data.
Improved Revenue Performance: Effective RCM programs have the potential to improve revenue performance, which is one of their most important advantages. The money comes in more quickly, consistently, and with fewer expenses. Profit maximization is the ultimate goal of revenue control management.
Demonstrable Value: Stakeholders want organizations to be able to demonstrate their worth. Investors, donors, trustees, and strategic partners are all possibilities. If you want to be able to back up your claims, you’ll need high-quality RCM. You can better connect your healthcare organization’s goals with those of other organizations for mutual benefit.
Improve Touchpoints To Improve Patient Experience: A well-trained revenue cycle management team and the correct technology may help ensure that the billing and coding process is as efficient as possible. As a result, the patient experience will be improved every step.
As a result, your patients will experience less anxiety, which, as you may know, is an essential component in evaluating the quality of hospital care. It’s also vital to note that patients benefit from better care because your staff can devote more time to them.
How Technology Aids Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management
IT and EHR technologies in healthcare have aided in streamlining and fine-tuning revenue cycle management approaches. Several companies employ technology to track claims, collect payments, and manage claim denials. In the end, these technologies help generate a consistent flow of income.
Revenue cycle management (RCM) accounts for 75% of the country’s healthcare facilities during the COVID-19 epidemic. As sales cycle management processes have transitioned to remote work, technology and automation have proven useful.
Many providers benefit from automating fundamental revenue cycle management challenges such as payer-provider communications, recommending relevant ICD-10 codes, monitoring medical billing processes, and scheduling patient appointments.
How to Manage Healthcare Revenue Cycles Successfully?
Here’s how to speed up the claims-processing and payment processes by making the most of your revenue cycle:
- Before registering a patient, check the patient’s insurance eligibility. According to well-known surveys, the most common reason for claim denials is a lack of eligibility
- To maintain flexibility, always keep your expenses lower than your earnings
- Communication with payers should be improved, and education on the payment procedure should be provided
- Keep your finances strong by donating to charity
- Strengthen your front-end tasks and collect all the data you need to get reimbursed before the due date
Conclusion
It is possible to avoid insurance claim denials essentially. Organizing your payments ahead of time can significantly improve your financial situation and alleviate various problems. As a result, your healthcare business must have a well-managed revenue cycle to maximize profits and plan for the future.