Outsourcing: Increasing Efficiency in the Healthcare Industry

A major challenge in any healthcare organization across hospitals or even small medical practices is increasing efficiently. The question of how to manage a healthcare workforce and also maintain a high standard of care is constantly evaluated; however, it does not have an easy solution without compromising the quality of care and time given to patients, except, in the case that experts highly training in healthcare revenue cycle management are often brought in to make the difference.

Outsourcing labor to highly trained experts cannot save on cost, but allow the healthcare industry focus on what it does best, care for patients. The difficult economic times over the last few years has had many hospitals and medical practices find more ways to use resources more wisely and increase efficiency. For instance, hospitals generally use monthly reports that are produced 10 days into the next month, when it is already too late to make changes in the budget. This is not efficient, and frankly a waste of time for many businesses.

A fail-safe way is to outsource to the experts. Revenue cycle management service specialists at Arlogix, for example, a leading medical revenue cycle partner, help hospitals gain quick insights into their business operations in order to identity key areas to impact for increased overall efficiency.

The Medical Industry Needs End-to-End Solutions

As technology advances and the medical industry has more technological needs in order to manage it’s overwhelming communications and billing system, the need to have a one-stop shop is ever more apparent.

Tensoft, for example, a leading end-to-end ERP and supply chain solution provider for the technology industry, announced the release of version 5.5 of its Tensoft revenue cycle management service (RCM) application.

The newest release includes updates to its revenue cycle management service and enhancements that address specific customer requests that benefit significant sub-sets of the product's user community.

This is an incremental release that enhances and adds to functionality. The improvements allow customers to more easily choose when they would like to update, and supports IT best-practices like user acceptance testing.

The Tensoft products supports additional methods for uploading contracts into the system in terms of initialization and CRM integration, enhanced billing options, greater flexibility for contract administration, and streamlined transaction posting.

This will prove useful with revenue cycle management training. Not only is it crucial to have comprehensive systems, it is important to have skilled and knowledgeable staff management the systems.

Arlogix, a medical collections outsourcing company, is a leader in revenue and billing training, streamlining and building efficiency in the medical industry.

What Does an Accounts Receivable Supervisor Do?

Accounts receivable represents the money that is owed to your firm from the sale of products or services by another entity.

Generally, the majority of businesses, accounts receivable are handled through invoices sent by mail or sent electronically. During accounts receivable training, one learns how to manage the process of invoicing the produces or services ordered by another business.

Once an invoice is delivered to the entity that owes money, they have to pay the bill within an established timeframe. The timeframe given is referred to as credit terms or payment terms. On a business’s Balance Sheet, accounts receivable, or money owed to the company is seen as an asset.

A supervisor that handles this part of the company’s balance sheet ensures that they receive the payment for their orders within the established timeframe. Additionally they are responsible for handling any delinquent accounts, monitoring for any potential payments problems, checking for errors in demographic and insurance information, and paying close attention to internal processing delays and errors. By working to improve collections for invoices they also work to increase workflow efficiencies within the business.

Advanced revenue cycle management training is another important aspect of being a successfully accounts receivable training, since the supervisor must analyze and trend the bookkeeping of the company.

Merging IT and Clinical Engineering

The convergence of information technology systems with clinic engineering has the potential to increase efficiency and decrease lag-time between medical technologies that are already part of an EMR network.

Clinical engineering is a division of biomedical engineering that deals with the implementation of medical technology and the optimization of healthcare delivery.

The fusion between the knowledge of clinical engineering and healthcare IT, along with the other related and associated management processes, such as EMR software, would allow for new models of care delivery beyond the current limitations of healthcare delivery. In Conference News in Health Imaging, Vi Shaffer, research vice president at Gartner Inc., a technology research company, is reported to believe that the convergence will bring about advancements in the hospital network, ambulances, the ER, and it may even result in the a substantial expansion of telemedicine.

Telemedicine is the delivery of clinical health care through telecommunication and information technologies remotely.

Shaffer also makes note that planning and technical support is extremely necessary for physicians to come together in order to learn the new technologies and have collaborative relationships and environments. Additionally, health IT certification training is important for staff and technicians responsible for planning, selecting, implementing, and managing electronic health records and other health information technology.

Reduce Energy Consumption with Balancing Valves

A principle focus around the world right now is how to be environmentally conscious, conserve natural resources, and build sustainable, low impact symptoms. While this is a global issue and a problem that needs to be resolved, there are many things that we can do in our own homes and buildings that go a long way.

Main culprits of inefficient resources consumption are our heating and cooling systems. Automatic balance valve systems are very useful tool that can help reduce wasted consumption and increase overall efficiency by making a few simple changes to your heating and cooling system. Considering that the costs of heating and water use are increasingly on the rise, it is becomes more practical and economic to invest on ways to save on consumption.

Larger building, such as schools, shopping malls, government buildings, and factories, need to have balancing valves that are automatic. Manual balances valves are more appropriate for smaller buildings or houses.

Before beginning your energy reduction plans, it is important to determine if your system needs balancing. It is important to note that having equal temperature throughout the system may not necessary mean that it is balanced. How large the space is, how often doors are opened and shut, and how well insulated the room is all are essential factors to take into account when setting up a balancing system.

When measuring the temperature of central heating pipes or when measuring the temperature difference between the two ends of pipe, find an area that is not painted, as paint can act an insulator and prevent you from getting an accurate reading. If your pipes are made of plastic you should find metal joints or fittings to measure the temperature. Be sure to measure the temperate near the boiler or a radiation system.

For more information of balancing systems visit Flo-Pac valves and venturi flow meter supplier homepage.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Revenue Cycle Management Service?

When there just don’t seem to be enough hours in a work day, tackling all tasks on the agenda can be a hard feat to accomplish. When dealing with patients face-to-face in a health care provider setting, the tasks that don’t involve in-person contact understandably get pushed to the back burner. Indeed, the patients should come first, but the accounting and billing is what keeps your practice afloat. If you find that your staff has a hard time staying on top of the insurance verification and billing flow, a healthcare revenue cycle management service is a solution to take care of all your billing and revenue management needs, leaving your staff free to make patients the number one priority.

What does a Revenue Cycle Management Service do?

An outsourced revenue cycle management service handles all the steps involved in revenue management – from patient registration, to verification, to claims and billing. After patient registration, the management service verifies the insurance information or checks patients’ eligibility for Medicaid or Medicare services. Claims are electronically submitted after the charge posting of the superbills. Medical accounts receivable is also managed by the revenue cycle management service, effectively reducing the amount of time the practice waits for payment. A good revenue management service will gladly create a customized management program that works best for your individual needs.

How Does It Benefit the Practice?

Employing an outsourced revenue cycle management service to handle your billing and accounts receivables is a cost-effective way to distribute office manpower. The knowledgeable and experienced healthcare revenue cycle management solution staff relieves that burden of having to keep up with the latest coding and billing standards and protocols. This, in turn, greatly reduces the probability of claims denials. Specially trained in HIPAA and state collections laws, revenue cycle management services work with insurance providers and patients to confidently ascertain the receipt of all money owed by patients and their insurance companies to your practice.

Hospitals Achieve EHR Meaningful Use, Reports Suvery

A recent study conducted on the EMR implementation rate in U.S. hospitals reveals the most current information on the U.S. hospital’s electronic medical record systems adoption process and the plans and strategies for the near future.

The survey was sponsored by the Optum Institute for Sustainable Health (the Optum Institute) as part of their goals to increase the quality and service of health care systems. They examined 301 U.S. hospitals and their state of progress in moving towards electronic and digital medical care, their current use of health information technology, and their plans for expansion.

What they found was that almost nine out of ten hospitals or 87 percent are currently using EMR software and systems. This is significantly higher than what they found in 2011. Additional, seventy percent reported that they have met the meaningful use criteria and seventy five percent reports that they plan to meet meaningful use criteria 2 by 2014.

According to an article published in Enhanced Online News, Simon Stevens, chairman of the Optum Institute reports that while hospitals are achieving the EHR meaningful use criteria, “most U.S. hospitals are still some way off from being fully ready to play their part in managing population health and its related financial risk”.