Hospital Consulting
Hospitals and health systems in the process of integrating multiple, newly acquired medical practices can feel a little like a pre-owned car dealership. There are BMWs, Toyotas, Fords, and very likely, a few clunkers. Each one has its own way of getting down the road, some with sophisticated practice management systems and smooth running cash flow, while others operate with antiquated systems and frequent breakdowns.
MedOptima helps hospitals and health systems successfully integrate and optimize the revenue cycle for newly acquired physician practices by transforming under-performing or dissimilar medical practices into a high-powered, unified billing engine that supports the organization’s mission and financial goals. It’s based on a proven methodology that employs five key components:
- Securing an objective assessment of each practice, its IT assets, processes, billing staff, and current financial standing
- Pulling patient payments forward in the revenue cycle
- Maximizing information technology (IT) utilization and automation, including migrating practices to a common platform and implementing powerful tools for data mining and trending, eligibility and point-of-service payment
- Aggressively streamlining and “leaning” processes using proven business strategies
- Establishing clear operational metrics so staff know what’s expected and are accountable.
Hospitals can engage MedOptima on three levels:
Consulting
Engage MedOptima to assess acquired medical practices and develop a strategic plan for integration. MedOptima can address specific assignments such as coding issues or lagging collections. We can also provide an objective assessment of the hospital’s central billing office for physician services to identify opportunities for streamlining and improved effectiveness.
Implementation
Once the integration strategy and opportunities for improvement are defined, MedOptima will implement all or part of the plan, including establishing or re-engineering a central billing office or migrating physician practices to the Allscripts Professional PM practice management system.
Outsourcing
Hospitals also can choose to outsource their billing for the entire medical practice enterprise or for specific specialties such as emergency medicine, primary care or office-based specialties.
Regardless of the level at which MedOptima is engaged, our goal is to assist hospitals in optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of their physician revenue cycle, and to unite dissimilar medical practices into the health system and have them working in unison as a powerful billing engine. Rest assured, it can be done. Let’s talk.
To Bill or Not to Bill:
That Is the Question
Physician coding and billing is an entirely different animal from hospital coding and billing. Each medical specialty has its own billing and coding nuances, needs and pains. Individual medical practices also have idiosyncrasies that drive their revenue performance to be better performers or underachievers. All of which can pose significant challenges for hospital finance departments.
Faced with the need to quickly and successfully integrate medical practices, hospitals are faced with these questions. Should we:
- Retain and integrate the medical practices’ existing billing staffs to the current central billing office?
- Re-engineer the current central billing office to achieve better efficiency and performance?
- Outsource some or all of the physician billing?
Each hospital’s situation is unique. However, the best place to start is with a thorough, objective assessment of the hospital’s current physician billing operation and any newly acquired medical practices along with their IT assets, processes, billing staff, and current financial standing. Let MedOptima help.
