While it is hard to believe that we have been in the midst of COVID-19 for over a year now, from a clinical documentation perspective the reality is that we are just beginning. Health information management (HIM) and revenue cycle professionals alike are embarking on a journey that will have many twists and turns in […]
A clean slate. A fresh start. A new beginning. Whatever phrase you use, it’s that time of the year when everyone makes resolutions to eat better, be better, and live better. Similarly, for healthcare organizations, it’s a time to recalibrate and reset—to pivot and rethink old strategies that are no longer effective. It’s also a […]
Winston Churchill once said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ It’s the idea that even in the most challenging of times, there are lessons to learn and perhaps even opportunities to seize. COVID-19 is truly a crisis of monumental proportions. The statistics are shocking: Many healthcare organizations have seen a 40% to 45% decrease […]
It’s an unfortunate reality: Today’s healthcare organizations don’t have the same financial reserves they did a year ago. Patient volumes plummeted in the wake of COVID-19, and now hospitals are faced with mounting denials and audits as payers ramp up documentation scrutiny. The good news is that CMS recently announced new repayment terms for Medicare loans made […]
All roads will lead to denials in 2021—unless you have a clinically-integrated revenue cycle During any disaster, organizations go into survival mode. It’s about saving lives and keeping people safe. That’s exactly what we saw with COVID-19. In the first few months of the pandemic, providers were inundated with symptomatic patients while struggling to obtain […]
As COVID-19 continues to take center stage for many healthcare and revenue cycle professionals, the daily task of rework related to denials continues to burden daily work processes as well as impact the financial viability of healthcare organizations across the country. We are several months into the COVID-19 pandemic and six months of 2020 are […]
The farthest thing from the minds of HIM professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic is the aftermath that will be experienced in the days, weeks, months, and perhaps years ahead. Today, HIM professionals are doing what they do best – bringing order to chaos by following the example set by the “First Lady of HIM.”[1] During World War […]
As HIM professionals, we learn the importance of documentation very early in our education and careers. And we know two things for sure: (1) every record represents a real person, and (2) if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen. That’s why during any disaster, and today as we face COVID-19, it is HIM professionals who […]
The revenue cycle landscape continues to become more complex with each passing year. As we start 2020 and a new decade, gone are the days when the business office was the leading player in the revenue cycle. Read the full article in Journal of AHIMA here
For many years, healthcare organizations operated exclusively under fee-for-service reimbursement models. The more services provided, the more healthcare providers were paid. But the model was allowing costs to spiral out of control and quality to suffer. Value-based healthcare is now poised to address this cost/quality challenge by reimbursing provider organizations based on the quality of […]