Rural Healthcare Partners
“Bob we have just spent over $1mm on an new EMR and we find our cash reserves diminishing, our accounts receivables are rapidly growing and frankly, we’re sweating this month’s payroll. I feel like I bought a new F150 pickup and I’m pushing it around to save on gas. Can you help me?”
Robyn Rollins, CEO, Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital
Hospitals are a complex organism that is comprised of a unique amalgam of people, processes and systems that ALL must interact seamlessly to produce effective, efficient and most importantly safe outcomes for patients. Further, the environment the hospital exists in is constantly changing. For example, in the billing world, Every Single Day, procedures change, CPT codes are added or removed, billing rules are adjusted, coding rules and processes are ever evolving- the only constant is change.
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Interoperability is important at all levels of healthcare and maybe more so in the rural setting. Bob and his team did what they said they would and we now run at a solid 49 AR and participate in more research than ever before.
Robyn Rollins, CEO
Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital
HSCMH’s entire staff, everyone from the leadership team to the registration staff, from providers and pharmacists to the billers and coders were frustrated, could identify problems and challenges at every turn but lacked the resources and capacity to identify solutions let alone implement them and measure their effectiveness.
AIAI/RHP’s data scientists and organizational behavior experts dug into all of the hospitals disparate IT systems and data, everything from the EMR to the Finance Application, from the Pharmacy Med-Rec data to external demographic data about HSCMH’s patients and catchment area- literally any data source that might offer insight into the entire environment. AIAI turned on EMERSONS to help identify which types of claims individual billers were most effective processing and to implement interventions to help address areas that needed improvement. Analyzing technical denials helped HSCMH and AIAI/RHP solve process flow barriers that began before the patient even left home for their doctors’ appointment.
The key was being able to address the data in the place it resides. EMERSONS allow the data scientists to pick specific areas of focus, apply analytical algorithms to not only identify opportunities, but to develop, test, implement and measure solutions- all without the traditional costs of interrupting everyone’s daily work to adopt change- typically the most common barrier to improvement.
Important successes were accomplished in every area of hospital operations. For example, by truly understanding the billing and collections process, identifying hidden challenges such as productivity drops because of the start of hunting season, or city baseball playoffs and planning for them. By matching billers with the types of claims they were most proficient at processing and cooperatively building human performance models with teams allowed us to reduce days in A/R from over 100 to less than 40, to increase cash reserves and enable a dramatic retirement of significant debt. Increased job satisfaction, retention and productivity across the board was critical and improved the reputation of the hospital in the community.
The Bottom Line: Connecting Emersons with Data produces results in every area of every organization that are measurable, and Important.