4 questions with Sparrow's new VP of revenue cycle

As the newly appointed vice president of revenue cycle for Sparrow Health System in Lansing, Mich., Kevin Sharp plans to make the department a core component of health system strategy.

Mr. Sharp joined Sparrow in 2009 and served as executive director of revenue cycle since 2012. During that time, he spearheaded the billing and revenue cycle divisions' transition to the Epic system. His appointment to vice president was effective June 26.

Mr. Sharp spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about his recent appointment, his leadership experience and his long-term strategy for the revenue cycle division.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Question: What were critical components to successfully leading Sparrow's revenue cycle and billing departments through an Epic implementation?

Kevin Sharp: I broke it down to four things. The first and most critical thing was that we as an organization set a strong set of guiding principles and stuck to them. One principle was that we always had the patient in mind as we were deciding how to build the system. Another was that we would use Epic for as many processes as we could so we would avoid disparate systems wherever possible. We also decided to use Epic to standardize our workflow and achieve best practices.

Number two, and equally important, was that we established strong collaboration between the IT and operational departments. Operations worked with IT from the very beginning, from kick-off through development, testing, training, go-live and now in optimization. A lot of systems let IT run EHR projects but we wanted to ensure operations played a big role.

Third, we tested every charge in the chargemaster. We did an end-to-end test of every claims scenario we could think of to prepare for go-live.

The fourth key thing we did was build a lot of operational infrastructure before go-live. We had committees and teams set up that would address any issues so we weren't scrambling to react.

Q: What plans do you have for Sparrow's revenue cycle operations in the coming year?

KS: Frist, enhancing the patient experience from registration through bill resolution. For instance, we're working to provide upfront estimates to patients as they schedule services, educating patients about available payment options and deploying tools to help patients manage accounts.

We've also got a fairly big project going on around pricing. We're trying to adjust our pricing so we can be more transparent, simpler and defensible to our customers and our patients.

The third major thing is we want to move the revenue cycle away from just a production department. Revenue cycle has typically been understood as producing claims and collecting money. Now, our focus is on maximizing reimbursement, so eliminating denials, reducing write-offs. We want to make it a strategic, almost income-generating division.

Q: What are you most looking forward to in taking over the VP position?

KS: In the VP position I'll be more involved in strategic planning for the health system. I'm really looking forward to being involved and seeing how the revenue cycle division can assist the health system to achieve strategic goals.

I'm also looking forward to creating better coordination between our payer contracting activities and our clinical documentation and billing areas. Our coding, documentation and payer contracting have typically operated in silos so I'm looking forward to helping improve coordination between those three areas.

Q: Do you have plans in the works for value-based projects?

KS: Part of our strategy about adjusting our pricing is so that we can be a little more flexible with the value-based payment mechanisms we are starting to see.

We're really focused on enhancing our clinical documentation and coding so we can optimize quality indicators and mortality and readmission metrics that are becoming a bigger part of payment systems today.

By aligning our contracting and clinical documentation activities, we can maximize our opportunities under these value-based care models. You really have to have those areas working together.

Finally, we're looking at ways to make the revenue cycle department more efficient and reduce costs. Our value metrics will look better if we can become a less costly part of the health system.  

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