She quit. He quit. Everybody quits. And the labor shortage in the healthcare industry is only getting worse. The mass exodus of skilled healthcare workers is placing a strain on hospitals. The industry has lost 20% of its workforce, according to industry estimates.
And it is not only clinicians and frontline workers who are leaving. Becker’s reveals that back-office specialists, medical coders, AR and denial management experts are in short supply. Experts predict that the shortage is going to last for sometime. It is important to recalibrate and focus on revenue growth. But how do hospitals stay financially resilient when their best workers are leaving?
With current resources spread thin and the inherent difficulty in hiring qualified resources, the staff shortage in healthcare is an all-new pandemic.
Medical coding and AR backlogs
Unworked accounts
Tripling of average appeal lag times
Fluctuations in productivity levels
Revenue loss
Financial uncertainty
I recommend going through every segment of your business and making decisions around what you want to have a core capability in. What functions can be done better via outsourcing? What can you automate or use technology to improve?”
- Elisa Myers, VP, Revenue Cycle Clinical Integrity, Providence Health and Services
Action: Investing in technology to speed up revenue cycle functions.
Outcome: By investing in revenue cycle technology hospitals eliminate time-intensive manual activities that drain internal capacity. Utilizing automation to carve off routine revenue cycle tasks, speeds up payments, optimizes operations, and prevents burnout.
Example: Automating claims status drastically reduces the time spent on checking insurance portals and updating information. This provides teams with significantly more time to work on high-priority, revenue generating tasks.
RCM - Healthcare Finance Management Association
Action: Work with a vendor partner to avoid staff burnouts
Outcome: The highest performing hospitals work together with vendor partners to collaborate on strategic revenue cycle issues. A strong partnership augments core revenue cycle functions, supplements specific areas/specialties and reduces the money spent on recruiting, training and managing new personnel. Reignite revenue growth and meet productivity goals despite being low on staff.
Example: Outsourcing medical coding and CDI functions enabled the coding staff of an ob-gyn medical group to meet bill-drop goals. It compensated for staffing and facility cost issues. The reduction of medical coding delays, inaccuracies, and coding related denials enabled the medical group to see a 30% improvement in net collections.
Are you struggling to fill open coding positions?
Our certified and experienced medical coders are ready to work.
Is your coding quality a cause of concern?
We perform coding audits that are designed to achieve quality and compliance standards.
Does working with new vendors take time that you don’t have?
We offer speciality-focused services. Our teams are system-agnostic and can work with all EHRs/billing systems. Start seeing changes from day 1.
Stop conducting revenue recovery audits. Stop analyzing what went wrong and why. Start recovering lost revenue and reducing unworked accounts.