A new year means new opportunities to set goals, reevaluate current workflows, and make the necessary changes to enhance your accounts receivable (AR) process. With payer agreements, market dynamics, and more all playing a role in limiting what you can charge, it has never been a better time to find ways to clean up outstanding AR within your hospital or healthcare system’s revenue cycle management (RCM) workflow. By implementing a few best practices and leveraging available technology, you’ll achieve that goal and be well on your way to strengthening your financial performance for the coming year. 

What Should Your Organization Focus on This Year?

Here are some key goals to embrace in the new year: 

• Establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help identify revenue cycle leakage early.
   
• Take full advantage of healthcare financial technology that automates time-consuming, manual AR-related tasks. This technology can help guide you through revenue cycle snags such as demographic verification, coverage eligibility and verification, the prior authorization (PA) process, and deductible monitoring. 
  

• Plan for stronger performance going forward by integrating that same technology into front-end revenue cycle process activities to find, correct, and verify patient and payer information to capture more revenue and reduce administrative burden. 
  

• Consider implementing a healthcare intelligence data service to see reimbursement rate and payment data for your area, track what your competition is charging, and better prepare for negotiating more favorable payer agreements. 
  

Once you’ve established goals and put tools in place, there are actions you can take to clean up your outstanding AR and improve financial performance going forward. To learn more about these strategies, read the article: 3 Steps To Clean up Accounts Receivable Now and Improve Financial Performance in 2024. 

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