Top 5 ways to boost your revenue cycle

When it comes to hospital and health system revenue cycles, there are many strategies you can approach to help put things on a positive trajectory. Whether they are changes small or large, they all impact the organization’s financial standing. But today, we’ve pulled together only the very best tips for increasing profitability.

1. Monitoring Payer Contracts

Because this is one of the top areas information tends to fall through the cracks, keeping a close eye on this department is an obvious place to start. Make sure your payers aren’t sending too many claim denials, that they’re not under-reimbursing, and that the required reporting isn’t placing too many demands on accounting staff. With the movement toward increased value-based purchasing, this area only becomes more complicated and complex.

2. Patients at the Core

Just like with any typical business, you need repeat customers to build up brand loyalty. In the healthcare environment, building patient loyalty means strong relationships that last the course of a lifetime. When you place patients at the core of the revenue cycle, they become powerful referral machines for your organization as well–because they trust the high quality care you provide. Focus on patient communication, positive interactions, great customer service, and top tier healthcare. You might also try:

• Both written and verbal explanations of procedures
• Helpful billing and payment departments that readily answer questions
• Explanation of coverage options

3. Study Metrics

The numbers don’t lie. That’s why your executive team members need to stay on top of reports on a weekly basis, meeting and discussing how trends effect the revenue cycle. Your metrics should also be studied against similar sized or peer hospitals and past performance.

4. Proper Planning

Scheduling and pre-registration are one of the main areas that revenue cycles get plugged up. When proper planning before the patient enters the facility doesn’t take place, you start the cycle on the wrong foot. Pre-authorizations, referrals, information collection, and payment education are just a few areas that need to be addressed with the patient from the very beginning. Have a checklist completed for each and every patient.

5. Electronic Payment

This is a world of technology–start accepting electronic payments to boost your revenue cycle. While electronic payments not carry as much information as their paper versions, marrying systems will help close the gap and give a big picture.

These 5 tips can help boost your revenue cycle, but only if you stick to them. Getting your healthcare revenue stream flowing freely is just the beginning of making lasting, impactful change on your organization.

Need help getting started? Read more.