Trusted RCM Partnerships: Look Beyond the Problem to Achieve Long-Term Goals

Strategic revenue cycle management partnerships can optimize productivity and help leaders tackle current challenges. For example, with continuously evolving coding requirements, stringent documentation demands, and the segmentation of data across multiple disparate software systems, the processes required for modern revenue cycle management (RCM) have never been more complex.

However, effective and strategic partnerships can help transform a healthcare organization’s revenue cycle and drive significant cost savings. The key is to identify the right partner and optimize the working relationship to ensure the focus is on managing against goals. Too often, outsourcing vendors position themselves as niche problem solvers while ignoring the bigger RCM picture.

The ideal partner should instead focus on what healthcare leaders want to achieve – treating problems and challenges as part of the larger puzzle versus the entire focus of the relationship.

A Collaborative Process

Establishing a trusted relationship with outsourcing vendors is a collaborative process that, when conducted properly, will result in a partnership that delivers the configurable solutions that best fit the healthcare organization’s current and future needs and helps them achieve their short- and long-term goals. The most effective method for doing this is a multi-faceted approach that starts with Discovery and Diagnostics.

The first step any trusted partner takes should be to fully understand the goals of the customer organization and the challenges that are preventing them from being achieved. This includes a discovery meeting during which the vendor’s experts meet with the customer’s team to discuss strategic growth plans, needs, and expectations. The vendor’s team will then work with the customer to review and assess current revenue cycle operations, including staffing, current practices, and technologies.

The next phase is Solution Design and Activation, where the vendor’s team conducts an in-depth analysis of the customer’s challenges and designs a comprehensive solution to help achieve their goals. The team will define the scope of the project with respect to the requirements obtained during the Discovery and Diagnostics phase and then develop a project plan and roadmap for design, development, and deployment.

During this stage, design engineers compare current performance to benchmarks and recommend a fully configured solution to meet the customer’s unique needs. The two sides will then meet to review the proposed solution, gather feedback, answer questions, and align on a course of action for development and implementation. During development, the vendor team will align the required resources for the configured solution and execute development plans as discussed during the design review. This is followed by collaboration with key stakeholders from the customer organization to implement the solution components and help them adjust operating procedures as necessary.