5 Reasons Why Healthcare Providers Should Outsource their Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Operations
If healthcare organizations want to adapt and grow in today’s marketplace, they need to scale their business operations. To achieve scale, healthcare companies must expand their service offerings and attract new patients while sustaining high quality services. Unfortunately, this often requires more resources–human and financial.
With shrinking profit margins, adding more resources is not an option for many healthcare systems and they’ve turned to outsourcing to support their non-clinical operations.
63% of hospital leaders surveyed by Kaufman Hall have pursued at least one outsourcing solution with the most common area being revenue cycle.
Why is scaling for growth important in healthcare?
“Scaling up” is not a new concept within healthcare, especially when it comes to public health initiatives.
Since the 1800s, public and private entities have scaled up to eradicate deadly diseases, like small pox and measles, through global vaccination efforts. Other national and global initiatives include safe food preparation and consumption, water treatment, suicide prevention, and smoking cessation.
These pivotal public health milestones were achieved leveraging scaling up principles, like data-driven approaches that allowed for targeted and mass interventions.
The same factors required to successfully scale up public health initiatives, like safe water storage practices and depression detection, apply to a healthcare organization’s financial operations.
Managing the finances of healthcare facilities continues to get complex and require a change in their structure, practices, and culture. Many healthcare organizations have turned to mergers and acquisitions to gain efficiencies but still fail to fully realize economies of scale.
5 Reasons Why Outsourcing Enables Hospitals to Scale Growth
1. Provides Industry Expertise and Specialization
Revenue cycle management (RCM) requires a thorough understanding of insurance claim billing and coding, physician enrollment, compliance regulations, and the healthcare industry as a whole.
Outsourcing RCM to a specialized service provider gives you access to a team of experts who are well-versed in the complexities of RCM. This expertise ensures that your organization’s financial processes are handled with precision, leading to improved collections, reduced billing errors, and increased revenue.
At Advantum Health, our in-depth revenue cycle knowledge and implementation experience are the primary reasons that clients seek our services.
2. Reduces Fixed Labor Costs
Hiring and training an in-house RCM team is expensive, as are salaries, benefits, and ongoing education to stay up-to-date with industry changes.
Outsourcing RCM allows you to convert fixed costs into variable costs, paying only for the services you need. This cost-effectiveness allows your organization to allocate resources more efficiently and focus on core business activities and growth strategies.
3. Enables Market Responsiveness
As your healthcare service offerings expand, the amount of billing and claims processing will increase.
An outsourced revenue cycle management (RCM) partner can easily accommodate this growth without the need for significant internal changes. The scalability and flexibility of an outsourcing arrangement ensures that your RCM processes can handle increased demands during periods of rapid expansion or fluctuations in patient volume.
4. Reduces Administrative Burdens
Managing the revenue cycle internally can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. By outsourcing RCM, you can redirect your staff’s attention to patient care, improving customer service, and strategic planning, allowing your organization to focus on its core competencies: patient care.
Instead of hospital staff spending hours on the phone following up on missing claim information and filling out tedious authorization forms, they can focus on more value added tasks.
5. Access to Advanced Technology and Tools
RCM service providers typically invest in advanced billing and coding software, compliance systems, and reporting tools. By outsourcing, your organization gains access to these state-of-the-art technologies without the need for significant upfront investments.
These tools can enhance the accuracy and efficiency of your revenue cycle management, leading to faster reimbursements, improved financial reporting, and better overall performance.
Conclusion
Scaling an organization needs to be done thoughtfully and strategically. Outsourcing Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) can be highly beneficial for an organization’s ability to scale and grow efficiently.
Outsourcing RCM operations provides healthcare organizations with the ability to leverage specialized expertise, cost-effectiveness, scalability, reduced administrative burden, and access to advanced technology.
Contact Advantum Health to find out how we can help your company scale and grow with revenue cycle optimization and service excellence.