Survey: 26% of Hospitals Without Effective Revenue Cycle Management System

You read that right: About a quarter of all US hospitals — 26% — do not have an effective healthcare revenue cycle management solution in place, according to a new Black Book survey.

According to RevCycle Intelligence, Black Book surveyed over 4,640 individuals from 522 hospitals and healthcare delivery networks regarding their use of 165 revenue cycle management technology services and solutions.

The good news: Revenue cycle management improvement is happening.

The bad news: A significant portion of hospitals still do not have workable solutions.

The RevCycle Intelligence article notes:

The most recent survey results show that about 400 hospitals implemented a viable, effective revenue cycle management optimization or have replacement plans over the past six years.

However, the opportunity to improve healthcare revenue cycle management remains. Of the 1,600 hospitals without a revenue cycle management optimization plan, about 82 percent expect to make value-based reimbursement decisions in 2019 without the use of an advanced software or outsourced partner, the survey showed.

Value-based reimbursement is overtaking the traditional fee-for-service system. The proportion of healthcare payments tied to an alternative payment model is rising, reaching 29 percent of healthcare payments by 2016, the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (LAN) recently reported.

The number of payments linked to value-based reimbursement is only going to increase as private and public payers implement alternative payment models to lower costs and improve care quality. And hospitals will be expected to take on the clinical and financial risks associated with the models.

The importance of an effective revenue cycle management solution cannot be overstated as the market transitions to value-based reimbursement. Earlier, we learned that almost a third of hospitals lack revenue cycle tech or automated remittance posting. Electronification of healthcare payments is integral part of driving costs down and increasing efficiency within revenue cycle.

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