PROVIDERS are facing greater pressure to streamline their operations, according to Paul Pitcher, director of financial systems at KLAS. There is an ever-increasing focus on such areas as denials management, late billings, point-of-service collection and reduction of errors on the front end, where providers hope to squeeze out more revenue. Providers are looking to better manage their chargemasters and looking for new technologies to reduce full-time employees and provide workflow to aid in pinpointing revenue that is not easily identifiable. “There is a desire for hospitals to improve and fine-tune every point in the revenue cycle,” he said.

THREE TRENDS TO WATCH 

Paul Pitcher, director of financial systems at KLAS, identified three trends impacting revenue cycle management:

1.REINFORCEMENT: Acquisitions of products by IT vendors to complete their revenue cycle management suite of tools will continue.
2. INVENTION: The industry is seeing a lot of energy in vendors coming out with newer products.
3. INTEGRATION: Providers are looking for integrated applications and systems and the elimination of bolt-on technologies.