Revenue cycle management automation streamlines the RCM process, making it easy for your team to collate patients’ data, send invoices seamlessly, and receive payments for all your services. Automation allows healthcare organizations the flexibility and scalability needed to increase their efficiency and achieve higher-quality outputs, while reducing processing costs, and improving customer satisfaction or patient experience.
Revenue cycle management is no doubt a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. Healthcare providers in the U.S. are faced with the challenge of streamlining their revenue collection and management so they can free up more staff hours to focus on their core objective, which is to provide adequate healthcare services to their patients. While navigating this complex and time-intensive process is possible manually, it is only a matter of time before your RCM staff are worn out and overwhelmed.
Automation, on the other hand, streamlines the RCM process, making it easy for your team to collate patients’ data, send invoices seamlessly, and receive payments for all your services. Automation allows healthcare organizations the flexibility and scalability needed to increase their efficiency and achieve higher-quality outputs, while reducing processing costs, and improving customer satisfaction or patient experience.
According to the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), the revenue cycle refers to the set of activities in the healthcare environment that brings about reimbursement for medical care, supplies, and treatment. Revenue cycle management is an all-inclusive process that involves front-end and back-end activities with the providers and their patients as the main stakeholders.
The revenue cycle management (RCM) process involves collecting data from patients, processing the data, and using the information obtained to make important decisions. These processes are also controlled by government regulators, which also contributes to making RCM a tedious process when handled manually. Thanks to new technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), artificial intelligence, and machine learning, healthcare providers and hospitals can now achieve better and faster results in their RCM performance.
RCM automation, particularly Robotic Process Automation, involves the use of specialized software programs to execute otherwise strenuous, time-consuming, and repetitive tasks, such as data collection and movement of data between multiple systems.
For providers in the U.S. healthcare system, the process of getting payments and reimbursements for services provided isn’t as simple as sending an invoice and receiving a check in return. Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) in the U.S. involves determining who owes what, scheduling appointments with insurance carriers, navigating medical codes, and managing insurer disputes — before receiving full payment for services.
With RCM, hospitals can track their payments and reimbursement claims, and when legal issues need to be dealt with, it is easier for them to handle. Following regulations by the passing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by Congress, many providers have digitized their RCM processes and workflow optimization of their results. But this doesn't mean that the system is free of inefficiencies, which is where RCM automation comes in.
With automation technology, RCM is error-free and is more efficient for completing tasks like:
The revenue cycle management process starts when a patient makes an appointment with a hospital and ends when the hospital or provider receives full payment for the services provided.
Below are ways automation makes the entire RCM process easier for providers in the U.S. healthcare system.
Automation makes life easy for your RCM staff. It offloads repetitive, frustrating, and yet important aspects of the RCM process. It simplifies the RCM workflow and takes out the inefficiencies and human errors in the process, making it easier for providers to collect revenue, send and track invoices, and improve their finances.
Revenue management can be quite hectic. And until your team gets it right, you might continue to waste so much time and energy trying to get a grip on the process. RCM automation makes healthcare financial administrative tasks seamless, reduces employee workload, and saves your organization money. It can also optimize your workflow and free your employees to focus on more innovative and problem-solving tasks.
Since the process is now automated, your team gets to work faster and smarter, completing complex tasks with less effort and resources, and in less time. Medical billing, for instance, becomes more accurate, faster, and more efficient. You can finally tackle the frustrating issue of denied claims and other avoidable mistakes.
The bottom line for every healthcare organization is providing the best medical care to its patients. But that is not limited to just treatment alone. Other associated services, such as the billing process can equally impact the experience of patients. Hence, 100% accurate billing, which is possible using automation technologies, can help avert surprise bills and increase patients’ confidence in your processes.
Leveraging automation technology in RCM processes helps to streamline and optimize your billing and revenue generation processes. But the key to achieving this is working with the right technology or hiring a team experienced in RCM automation. You can leverage several advanced technologies, such as intelligent automation (IA), robotics process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).
Here at Discover Claims, we also include a proprietary technology that allows you to track down and collect on charity accounts without even contacting your patients. Our third-party liability claims recovery tool is a game-changer for healthcare providers that are struggling with collecting payments provided to patients without any insurer on record. We streamline the process and make it faster and easier for you to get paid for your services.
Discover Claims is a tech-enabled RCM service provider focused on auditing hospitals' Charity accounts to identify those that now have insurers on file. Our solution is targeted at helping hospitals that are losing millions of dollars every year by giving free care to patients whose care has been written off but later gets paid by Third-Party Liability insurers.
To keep this from going unchecked, Discover Claims developed an automated claim matching tool that finds those legal actions and ensures the hospital always gets its fair share of reimbursement. If you fear that some of your patients may have received free care and a settlement check, find out now and get reimbursement for your services. For any questions, contact billy.ayoola@discover-claims.com.
This content is powered by Mission and was co-authored by the Discover Claims Team.
