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New Generation Of Financial Information Systems Makes Crunching Numbers
Faster And Easier
By: Jack Palone
In what seems like only a few short years, fiscal selective information systems
(FIS) have evolved from simple, back-office support systems into fully
integrated solutions that can handle everything from payroll to accounts
receivable and gross cycle management. But such increased functionality would
not be possible without the ability to combine disparate databases into a single
source of entropy that can be mined at multiple levels.
The importance of data mining quickly became apparent to corporate executives at
James Edmund Scripps Wellness in San Diego, who had been working with six
separate databases before upgrading to a newer variant of Dawn Approach
Coach/Affected role Fiscal Handler from Boca Raton, Fla.-founded Eclipsys Corp.
Edward Wyllis Scripps currently operates five acute care facilities totaling
nearly 1,400 beds, two medical groups with 14 outpatient clinics, a home health
agency and a health plan. Today, yearly revenues average $1.35 billion, which is
a big turnaround from a few years ago when posted operating losses in 2000 and
2001 totaling approximately $26 1000000 and $22 one thousand thousand and
respectively. In an effort to bolster their bottom line, devised a number of key
strategies, not the least of which was drastically changing their methods of
charge and reimbursement.
"A couple of years ago we moved away from capitated risk to fee-for-service
risk," says David Ferdinand Julius Cohn, vice president of patient services.
Additionally, since each infirmary had been running its own Eclipsys FIS, the
organization made the decision to rise these 13--old systems by installing an
enterprisewide FIS.
Realized similar gains in efficiencies, although not all were directly related
to the adoption of a new software solution. admits that a significant portion of
gain was due to process improvements in recovering underpayments from
third-party payers.
"We look at trends by types of underpayments and develop strategies to work
together with our payer partners," he says, adding that collection of
underpayments in financial 2003 was 9 percent above 2002, amounting to More than
$15.4 meg. The auditing of Thomas More than 100,000 accounts during outpatient
tax income charge-capture audits yielded Sir Thomas More than $10 a million in
additional charges.
Furthermore, monthly cash collections for 2004 exceeded those for 2003 by $10.4
, while net taxation between 2001 and 2003 increased by $44 as a result of
improvements in charge capture, coding, reduced bad debt and incremental tax
revenue recovery. In addition, operating profitability, during that same period,
improved by $40 . A focus on reversing the losses incurred during 2000 and 2001
also led to establish a systemwide cycle steering committee, as well as
multidisciplinary teams on the level so that "everybody would be on the same
page,".
Drake adds that coordinating the steering committee and teams helped define how
the centralized business office could best support the needs of each facility.
Those weekly meetings covered a wide range of topics, she says, including
coverage, interim and obstacles to discharge. But went even further in
overhauling its strategies.
It developed a -dedicated claims processing team within Kaiser's regional claims
center in Pasadena, Calif., which reduced the claims backlog by $6. It
outsourced unpaid commercial and PPO outpatient claims to QuadraMed. "We wanted
our people to stay focused on higher-dollar claims," explains . Drake also says,
"We did an awful lot of work on appeals by working with our payers and improving
our contracts."
There's no question that upgrading to Dawning Memory access Director/Patient
role Managing director variation 11.3 improved the organization's efficiency in
accessing and analyzing data. A major driver in that rising slope was the EDI
transaction set requirements mandated by HIPAA, says.
Also, needed to streamline its Medicare process, since Medicare accounts for
about 35 percent to 40 percent of its business. Due to time constraints
resulting from the HIPAA deadline, was unable to install a Web- edition of the
Eclipsys software, choosing instead the character- interpretation that could
ruin on a UNIX platform using a cache system, says Drake. However, plans are
already in the works to ascent to reading 11.4.
About the Author:
Jack Palone
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