Stay Ahead of the Revenue Cycle—Clean Up Your Center’s Processes!

Let’s talk cleaning. The truth is, I fully intend to the leave the dusty corners and closets to you, however, I would love to work through the internal review processes that could get things satisfactorily sorted at your ASC.

Fortunately, cleaning house at your center is as simple as review, strategize and correct.

Take A Look Inside

An old Harvard Business Review article once suggested that 85% of executive leaders spent less than an hour each month reviewing their strategy while top leaders spent up to eight. Can I strongly encourage you to be one of the latter?

Things change frequently in our business—rules, requirements, codes, best practices. Add staff turnover to that and you have every reason to routinely review your internal processes. Consider how often you review your A/R and net revenue. Is it weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? You should review your key internal processes at the same time as they are directly responsible for performance, whether positive or poor.

Strategize From What You Learn

What did you learn from your most recent process review? Did you come across a hiccup in coding? Find a stumbling block involving payer contracts? As you explore your own processes, you’ll begin to see areas in which you can re-strategize to improve performance. Take advantage of what you learn and let it inform targeted process adjustments.

Also, remember that strategy is a collective effort, not one left only to senior leaders. Developing and revising strategy should involve any and all key personnel involved with the targeted RCM process you’re working to adjust.

Correct Problems Where They Start

Whenever you find a problem, find its source—whether human error, old technology, inaccurate billing master—and begin correcting from there. Think of it this way. If you’re in a boat with a slow leak, you have two choices: dock the boat so you can find and repair the leak, or wait for water to collect and then start bailing yourself out with a bucket. The latter option is exhausting and time consuming; not to mention, you’ll eventually still have to dock and repair (assuming you don’t sink your boat first).

So just start with the simplest solution, yeah?

Keeping house at your ASC is really a lot like keeping any other house. If you mind simple tasks along the way and address small problems as they arise, you’re far less likely to ever be faced with catastrophic events or overwhelming days of spring cleaning. And if you need help sorting and prioritizing the task list, give us a call at Full Circle—we’ll walk with you from room to room (or process to process) and help you strategize key process adjustments.