As margins tighten across the industry, revenue cycle leaders are finding that one of the most reliable levers for financial performance sits closest to the patient: the billing experience itself. Automating payment collection, consolidating fragmented billing platforms and giving patients more digital ways to pay have moved from back-office projects to strategic priorities, with measurable effects on cash flow and operating margins.
At MemorialCare, based in Fountain Valley, Calif., the biggest driver of revenue cycle improvement came through Epic’s Gold Stars optimization program, said Ashley Foster, the health system’s vice president of information systems applications. Over two fiscal years, MemorialCare upgraded its payment gateway vendor, integrated credit card payments into Epic, added online and mobile bill payment along with self-serve payment plans, moved patients who opted in to fully paperless statements, and built out dashboards giving operational leaders more visibility into the numbers.
“As a result of these efforts, operating margins experienced an increase of automatic payment posting by 35% and point-of-service payment collection by 10% across all entities, with some individual practices experiencing growth up to 15%,” Ms. Foster said.
Pittsfield, Mass.-based Berkshire Health Systems implemented a new patient payment platform designed to modernize how bills reach patients and how easily they can be paid. Carol Siedsma, the system’s vice president of revenue cycle, said the platform lets patients receive bills digitally and enroll in a straightforward payment plan.
“We have received positive feedback from our patients and accelerated cash flow,” Ms. Siedsma said.
For Atlanta-based Grady Health System, an improved patient financial experience was part of a larger overhaul. Over the past five years, Grady brought its employed providers together with Morehouse School of Medicine and Emory University School of Medicine onto a single professional billing platform, according to Monica Richey, the system’s interim vice president of revenue cycle.
“Consolidating multiple physician enterprises into one revenue cycle operation eliminated unnecessary complexity, standardized workflows and created operational efficiencies that continue to benefit providers, staff and patients,” Ms. Richey said. “It also changed what patients experience directly.”
“Patients now interact with a more consistent billing process, creating greater transparency and reducing confusion across our academic physician practices,” Ms. Richey said.
The standardization also opened the door to further automation. With workflows aligned across all three organizations, Grady has been able to deploy robotic process automation and artificial intelligence across key revenue cycle functions, letting staff spend less time on repetitive tasks and more on higher-value work that supports patients and providers directly, according to Ms. Richey.
The financial results have followed. Ms. Richey said Grady has achieved sustained double-digit revenue growth year over year since the consolidation, while building what she described as a more scalable revenue cycle for the future.
“Large-scale transformation is never the result of technology alone,” Ms. Richey said. “It requires committed leadership, trusted partnerships and talented people willing to embrace change. This work demonstrates that when organizations unite around a common purpose, they can simultaneously improve financial performance, operational excellence and the patient experience.”
Ms. Richey said the greatest success of the initiative is not simply that it integrated three organizations.
“It is that we created one revenue cycle that better serves the patients who depend on Grady every day,” she said.
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