Business
Education, competitive pay called key to improving revenue management
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Dec. 7, 2009
Hospitals that are successful both financially and with patients tend to give more training to billing and collections staff. They also pay employees more and have incentives for employees to meet financial targets, said a Nov. 16 report by the Healthcare Financial Management Assn.
Researchers analyzed data on 14 facilities with high operating margins and patients who recommended them to others, then compared them with an average pool of institutions.
Some 64% of high-performing facilities had more than 10 days of revenue cycle training for financial counselors; only 52% of the other institutions did. And 86% of the high performers had staff incentives, but only 44% of other facilities did.
More of the high-performing organizations also offered flexible work arrangements, regularly solicited feedback from physicians and had a greater number of options for patients to pay at the time of service.
The report was issued as part of the organization's Patient Friendly Billing Project, aimed at improving hospital collections processes.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/12/07/bibf1207.htm.
