Hospitals Awarded for Revenue Performance

WASHINGTON — The Advisory Board Company (ABCO) has chosen three hospitals and one health system to receive 2014 Revenue Cycle Solutions Awards, which recognize institutions’ efforts to improve financial performance.

The four institutions are among more than 700 hospitals nationwide that are members of ABCO’s Revenue Cycle Solutions programs, which help hospitals evaluate and determine ways to improve financial status.

These institutions have seen impressive improvements, according to ABCO, including $8.2 million in additional revenue, improved compliance, reduced bad debt and an increase of $6.1 million in point-of-service collections.

Baptist Beaumont Hospital, Beaumont, Texas

A member of Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, 325-bed Baptist Beaumont Hospital launched a clinical documentation improvement (CDI) program that had limited physician support. Hospital leaders turned to ABCO for help to motivate staff. A focused initiative pinpointed ways to improve coding and documentation performance, and one-on-one education efforts with underperforming physicians helped increase efficiency and strengthen staff interactions. The hospital saw an $8.2 million boost in revenue in 12 months.

Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, Jackson, Miss.

Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, with 628 beds, saw in its preparation for the rollout of the new ICD-10 coding system that the hospital also had an opportunity to improve clinical documentation under the current ICD-9 coding system. The health system structured CDI training that covered both ICD-9 and ICD-10 at the same time; doing so, they were able to drive compliance and save significant staff time.

IU Health Goshen Hospital, Goshen, Ind.

A 122-bed hospital, IU Health Goshen was facing a rise in uninsured admissions and patient out-of-pocket obligations. The hospital provided patients greater transparency into patient obligation at the onset of care, in part by implementing a presumptive charity policy, which reviewed every patient household for charity eligibility. The solution reduced bad debt, increased community benefit and improved the efficiency of the patient billing process.

Springhill Medical Center, Mobile, Ala.

The 252-bed Springhill Medical Center had a large number of patients discharged without their final bill (DNFB) because the hospital struggled with evaluating patient payment responsibility to calculate accurate bill estimates. The facility launched an initiative across many departments to improve financial performance and link all of the revenue cycle components to one database so frontline staff can see patient responsibility, payment history, and charity eligibility at the onset of care. Springhill also enabled online bill payment to increase the efficiency of accounts receivable. Through these initiatives, Springhill increased point-of-service collection by a cumulative $6.1 million over the past four years and decreased DNFB from a high of 9.3 percent to an average of 5.73 percent.