There is a revolution taking place today in the healthcare market, revenue cycle management outsourcing. As depicted in a recent survey, there is an 86% increase of demand in outsourcing full revenue cycle management systems. Since 2015, there is a growing interest among hospitals and inpatient organizations as they realize their need for a healthier and more stable medical billing solution. In 2018 so far, 18% of hospitals have implemented a revenue cycle system compared to the 11% implemented for the last 3 years combined. The report also stated, the average hospital costs must fall by 24% by 2022 for organizations to break-even.
Financial pressures are increasing as there is an unfortunate trend of hospitals filing for bankruptcy due to untracked patient bills and unpaid bills which may become a complete loss for the organization. Hospitals are putting themselves in financial danger by falling behind from not implementing technology resources. Employees are at risk of unemployment by not having the proper medical documentation software at their fingertips to recover debt. There are options to save jobs and hospitals across the country with real-time patient billing data to keep them from closing their doors. The survey begs the question: what is my hospital doing to keep up with the curve?
As patient billing for hospitals and inpatient care organizations increases in complexity, the need to automate and improve the patient billing process is more critical than ever. Diagnosing errors and streamlining patient billing can decrease coding time, reduce errors and increase patient care time for practitioners; ultimately leading to a more profitable organization.
Healthcare outsourcing has been limited to certain areas but organizations are recognizing they can reduce costs and focus on value-based care by outsourcing into other areas such as enterprise resource planning and key clinical functions. Employees do not have to view outsourcing as job loss but as a solution to save and improve their jobs. By reducing operational costs, hospitals can then invest in themselves for future equipment and programs for patients.
One size does not fit all and there are multiple RCM vendors to choose from and it is important to do your research before selecting the vendor that best fits your organization’s needs. As 2018 moves forward, the rate of implementation for revenue cycle management outsourcing will increase into 2019. There has been a significant growth of demand in outsourcing several healthcare areas since 2015 as the survey represents the push for hospital costs to drop 24% by 2022 in order to break-even. Initiatives are being taken by executives to run their practice with high-visibility for a sustainable cost structure and must accomplish managing new solutions.