An Insider Look at Working With a New AGS Health Customer

I am always excited to work with new customers. It is interesting to learn how they impact the healthcare industry and serve patients. Each customer is unique; however, the goal for almost every healthcare organization is to provide the best patient experience and care, and I feel very honored to be a part of that mission.

The AGS team acts as an extension of our customer’s organizations. Therefore, it is important to have open lines of communication. When we onboard healthcare organizations and learn about their revenue cycle, we also look at other areas of their business. It’s important that we understand operations and workflow, any nuances in the revenue cycle, and what their goals are so we can align and build a strong working relationship. Understanding their organizational goals and their goals for our engagement allows us to work together to establish milestones and set expectations for team members – on the client side and at AGS.

Some customers may be new to working with an offshore revenue cycle partner. In those instances, we focus on transparency and communication. We share what it’s like to work with offshore staff because it is a little different and we want to set clear expectations early on. By being transparent about national holidays for offshore staff, time differences, etc., we proactively set clear expectations and can answer any questions that may come up. Our customers have come to appreciate this element of onboarding and it helps them become more comfortable with the entire process.

This open dialogue also helps our customers optimize AGS services in ways that grow revenue, mitigate risk, and control costs. For example, processes such as eligibility verification, payment posting, or coding can be performed by the offshore team (during the night in the U.S., but during the day offshore) so by the time the customer starts their day the work from the day before is completed. This around-the-clock work schedule is extremely efficient.

Once aligned with the customer goals and objectives, we get clear about policies and procedures, payer specifics, special handling, etc. The transition team is heavily involved at this point. Their role is to ensure the AGS staff have all the required access and training. Our audit team provides the required training and assesses customer processes. Ongoing monitoring ensures continuous improvement.

I think it’s important for customers to know that the entire AGS Health team is committed to high-quality work that contains revenue for our clients. We are very collaborative – both internally and with our clients. This is why aligning goals with our clients is so important. Our team takes great pride in delivering the results that our customers are after. For us to be successful, we all need to work toward the same goal.

Our transparency, responsiveness, pre-empting customer queries, and proactively addressing potential issues are critical for us to build a strong working relationship. This also helps us to ease any reservations customers may have if it’s their first time offshoring.

I encourage customers to ask questions and share feedback. If they have an unmet need or we miss the mark, I want to know so we can course correct as quickly as possible. I want our customers to love working with us. Honest conversations, even the difficult ones, are opportunities to improve. We need to know the root cause behind a situation so we can work toward resolution. The most successful relationships are the result of two-way commitment and open communication.

AGS focuses on our customer’s long-term strategy. We actively share and solicit inputs from customers about emerging changes in the healthcare industry. These ‘trendspotting’ conversations help us determine if adjustments are needed to our engagement strategy.

I also think it’s important that customers know we can replicate the tools or reports they use internally. We want customers to feel like life got easier when they decided to engage with AGS, so we seek out ways to deliver positive experiences.

I get very involved and passionate when customers reach out with either a problem or a strategy. For example, there were a couple of instances when I had worked with a customer’s consultant to redesign a workflow tool during a large acquisition.

Having worked as an A/R follow-up representative, I look for trends while reporting A/R. We also provide recommendations on customer processes. For example, in an Emergency Room setting, we typically see a higher self-pay patient who could possibly get retro coverage at a later point. Such patients are identified and billed instead of written off as bad debt.

I also help to identify repetitive tasks that could be automated. Typically, in A/R we look for trends leading to denials or non-payments of claims and provide recommendations to avoid denials. Sometimes it is a simple fix that will make a big difference. For example, preventing registration denials when billing the correct HMO could result in avoidance and quicker reimbursement or creating a front-end edit to fix the claim before they are sent out.

For customers I have worked with for several years, I also partner on their leadership development programs to provide insights on globalization, which has been a great experience.

A quicker turnaround time and higher quality than customers were previously experiencing. Most claims are coded and billed within 24 hours resulting in reduced pre-bill days, quality work resulting in fewer denials, and a faster cash flow.