Rural hospital networks suffer from a lack of staff and funds. However, utilizing technology to manage charges and funds helps with the challenges faced by rural hospitals.
Learn how the implementation of technology in the hospital system is a benefit and allows hospitals to keep up as well.
Technology Helps Manage Bandwidth
Hospitals suffer from a lack of bandwidth. Revenue cycle resources are often allocated to other parts of the hospital system, leaving gaping holes in handling charges.
Technology platforms help organizations manage all charges improving bandwidth. Instead of putting all the resources into this, utilizing charge capture technology enables staff to focus on validating medical record output.
If you don’t have a large team, you need to be smart with how you allocate resources. Most hospital teams don’t have enough people to watch out for and chase down any missed charges since everyone’s too busy. The hospital is pulled in multiple directions, so costs tend to be left in the dust.
But, with charge capture technology and optimization, you have a platform dedicated to managing and auditing charge capture. By allocating a couple of resources combined with technology, your hospital can start reducing that handling this can make that 12% of missed charges. In many cases, technology will fix 95% of the issues early on and let you manage the hospital charges without pulling in additional resources.
Makes Up For Educational Gaps In Office Management
Another major issue with rural hospitals is the educational gaps that come into place. Training is costly, so the management employees are usually not trained on the latest revenue cycle best practices. If someone’s let go, training starts over, which is costly. Staff turnover is about 19.5% in the hospital system, which is higher in other industries. While relying on technology does help, having people who know how to use it does help with proper utilization because a lack of education means missed workflow opportunities.
Many billing resources are managed by those that grew up in the town, got a job straight out of high school there, and then 15 years later is the director. They might not have any outside training, and it’s hard to manage this because you don’t know what you don’t know.
Technology helps reduce knowledge gaps, and it’s better to have a teacher that’s rightfully trained in the area’s technology than just have the payment charges managed by one person who is prone to human errors.
Helps Capture Charges Without Capturing The Budget
Budget issues are a major concern of rural hospitals and, often, are a major problem with charge capture initiatives.
Part of it is the budgets, which are hard to get approved for the resources utilized, and when competing with other revenue cycle functions, it’s hard to get funding approved for technology and resources.
If you utilize technology to handle charge captures and manage your financial outlook, you can reduce the amount of missed revenue. It’s also easier to get the budget approved for new technology than for new employees because the cost for additional resources is much higher and people require training.
With proper charge capture technology and systems in place, it also takes out the trouble of sending this out to an auditor who will charge a gross amount of money for auditing charge capture and also will help you look at the data at the root, find the holes, and then update it to make sure that it’s correct.
Plus, utilizing technology for charge capture reduces the need for additional resource bandwidth, and it doesn’t take long to get approved.
Often charge capture technology costs are based on found revenue, which mitigates the risk to hospitals as opposed to paying for an auditor with no guarantee of uncovering revenue.
Utilizing charge capture technology also reduces the leakage of the net revenue so that you’re not stressing because you’re missing something. In the rural health industry, the lack of money is a major concern, and this helps to patch up the hole in the system.
Keeps Employees Doing Their Job
Finally, with the aid of charge capture technology, it fits all budgets and takes employees off trying to scramble for the correct charges.
This is a major benefit for many hospitals since it lets staff continue to do their job without being pulled to help audit charge capture. The chasing of revenue becomes a priority for those who don’t have the right charge capture technology.
Ultimately, it affects the care you give to the people you’re supposed to be helping. It hurts patient experience, especially since you’re scrambling to find the missing or extra charges instead of helping those who come into your hospital for help.
The best way to make money is to provide the right care and have your heart in the right place. If you’ve got people who do that already, but they’re too busy chasing claims, it leads to unhappy staff and patients.
Rural hospitals that utilize charge capture technology realize that they’re not as focused on ensuring they’re reimbursed for every single charge, and instead, they can focus on the care of their patients. This reflects positively on the organization, and it helps build trust in your community.
Charge Capture Technology Is A Blessing In Disguise
There are a lot of benefits and opportunities in utilizing charge capture technology, especially in rural hospitals where the resources might be scarce. Stop losing money due to missed charges and start patching those holes with charge capture technology, so you can worry less about revenue and focus on caring for patients.
Request a demo today to discover how you can utilize charge capture technology to stop revenue leakage and reduce uncompensated care.
