The Power of Patient Access:
Your Key to Revenue Protection
Investing in your patient access team is critical for revenue cycle success, ensuring the protection and acceleration of your health system’s cash flow.
The Unsung Heroes of Healthcare Revenue Cycle
As the National Association of Healthcare Access Management (NAHAM) celebrates 50 years of patient access services, it’s imperative to recognize the many hats these professionals wear. Serving as the first point of contact for patients, they handle essential tasks like obtaining important documentation, delivering timely care, navigating insurance complexities, and more. However, a patient access team’s most significant contribution may be their impact on a health system’s revenue cycle.
“Patient access has a plethora of direct impacts on the revenue cycle,” shared Sterling Coker, Chief Revenue Officer at Mercy, “including scheduling, demographic capture, the capturing of insurance information such as benefits and eligibility verification, price estimate preparation, and financial discussions (like point-of-service and prior balance collections).”
These front-end processes can facilitate smooth operations in a health system or present hurdles and complications. When patient access teams are overwhelmed with time-consuming manual tasks, it burdens them with heavy administrative duties, which can inadvertently lead to neglecting the patient experience. Patients have become more discerning in choosing their healthcare providers, and if their experiences fall short of their expectations, health systems risk losing them.
Patient Access: Vital for Exceptional Healthcare Experiences & Revenue Protection
According to the National Library of Medicine, in today’s healthcare landscape, the patient experience is acknowledged as “an independent dimension of healthcare quality, along with clinical effectiveness and patient safety.” With health systems striving to provide consistent and exceptional patient experiences, patient access teams play a pivotal role in achieving this goal. They ensure patients feel valued and satisfied, encouraging them to return for future care. In addition to fostering loyalty, patient access teams are responsible for accurately and promptly collecting and entering patient data into the hospital’s system. This task is vital to prevent claim denials and mitigate revenue loss.
“Patient access prevents the loss of revenue and impacts operating margins by the accuracy of timeliness of their front-line processes,” explained Coker. “Errors from data captured in registration can cause pre-cert denials, claim rejections, returned statements, and potential for HIPAA violations.”
Enhance Revenue Cycle Efficiency With Innovative Technology
Reducing the manual workload for patient access teams can increase precision and enable them to focus more effectively on enhancing the patient experience. By utilizing innovative technology to automate front-end processes, patient access teams can save valuable time, boost accuracy, and minimize claim denials.
Advanced technology empowers health systems to kickstart their revenue cycle effectively. With the Trace® platform from Vyne Medical, patient access teams can direct their time and attention away from tasks that don’t demand human intervention.
Harnessing automation to capture, organize, and exchange data from various sources, including voice, fax, images, and documents, this healthcare-specific software simplifies processes for patient access teams. Through an integration with your EMR, the captured data can be automatically indexed to the patient record, streamlining front-end processes.
Workflow Solutions that Empower Patient Access Teams
As a leading healthcare workflow tool for 25+ years, the Trace platform functions as a suite of products that can be customized to meet a patient access team’s unique processes and needs.
Vyne Medical’s solutions ease the administrative burden on patient access teams by:
- Facilitating the electronic management of patient data in various formats, including voice, fax, image, or electronic document
- Storing captured information in a centralized digital repository, making it easily and quickly accessible for patient access departments and enterprise-wide
- Providing transparency into ongoing tasks, transactions, and worklists across departments
- Allowing teams throughout the health system to search for information using patient account number, date of birth, document type, or other customized fields
Invest in Your Patient Access Team to Boost Revenue & Enhance Care
Investing in your patient access team can accelerate revenue and ensure patients receive timely, precise care. Remove the front-end’s repetitive, manual tasks, and let your patient access team prioritize the compassionate connections only human interaction can provide.
Ready to invest in your patient access team for faster, more streamlined operations? Discover more at vynemedical.com.
Explore Further
Want to dive deeper? Read more on the topics covered in this blog:
- Start the Year Off Right: Strategies for Enhancing Revenue Cycle Performance
- Key Tips for Successfully Managing and Optimizing Your Revenue Cycle
- The Evolution of Patient Access: A Look at the Modern Landscape
Sources:
Coker, Sterling. “The Profound Impact of Patient Access on the Revenue Cycle.” www.naham.org/page/ConnectionsPatientAccessRevCycle.
Oben, Patrick. “Understanding the Patient Experience: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Patient Experience, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7786717/.