Revenue Cycle Provides Improvements In A/R, Cash Collection

Communication between the front and back office is crucial to the success of a health care practice. Barnabas Health, the largest not-for-profit, integrated health care delivery system in New Jersey and one of the largest in the nation, is working to improve revenue cycle management in its acute and ambulatory facilities.

In 2014, Barnabas Health began implementation of Cerner Practice Management and Business Office Services. Barnabas Health implemented Cerner’s Electronic Health Record, acute to ambulatory, from 2009-2012.

With the help of a Cerner Revenue Cycle Executive, Barnabas applied a programmable Revenue Cycle Assessment Tool, Basic Class for its staff working in 240 clinics across 18 counties, and a Front Office Process Scorecard to report on key progress metrics.

Registration process improvements--such as verifying demographics, insurance, and address, collecting co-pays and past-due balances, and health plan authorizations and referrals, have significantly impacted the clean claim rate which has resulted in positive improvements in days in A/R and accelerated cash collections.

With revenue cycle outsourcing implementation, improvements for Barnabas included:

• 13 percent improvement in clean claim rate
• 18 percent reduction in days in A/R

A dedicated revenue cycle executive onsite working side-by-side before, during, and after implementation has been a key to success for Barnabas.

“Barnabas pushed us to not just fix claims, but to solve the problem. To accomplish this, we’ve really reinforced standards, provided needed education and best practice protocols to help shift the way it was always done,” said Cara Campos, Cerner Revenue Cycle Executive overseeing the Barnabas revenue cycle optimization. “Our communication loops provide trends and identify where there are improvement opportunities. This is important because it helps Barnabas create efficiencies by isolating problem areas. We consider ourselves an extension of their team helping with the management of the revenue cycle process in the front office.”

Learn more about Cerner RevWorks and its two primary objectives: reducing cost and increasing net revenue.

Cara Campos will speak on Barnabas Health and how extending a physician practice with medical billing services can help improve overall business process at Cerner Health Conference, Sunday, Oct. 11, in Kansas City, Mo.