In this special Speaker Series, Becker's Healthcare caught up with David Kelly, director of revenue cycle at Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
Mr. Kelly will speak on a panel during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference that is titled "The Best Thoughts on Improving Revenue Cycle Today," at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.
Question: Can you share your best advice for motivating your teams?
David Kelly: I think the best [advice] I have for motivating my team — and of course I hope they would agree — is trying to talk to them about how pushing all these dollars and claims around on their computers relates to keeping our doors open and how that relates to helping patients in our community and keeping their coworkers across the enterprise employed. Tying administrative work that is often far removed from patient care to the organization's actual impact is really critical.
Q: What is the biggest barrier to price transparency in the healthcare industry?
DK: The biggest barrier to price transparency to me is probably multiple problems rolled into one, which I'll sum up as a "gap in knowing" — our estimator doesn't know if a surgery will go long or find complications, patients don't know how charges work and how it impacts them, and payers don't always know the cost-share status of a patient in real-time as they're always dealing with a claims lag. Those gaps and other similar gaps create huge barriers to achieving accuracy in estimation.
Q: What is the most exciting thing happening in health IT right now? And what is the most overrated health IT trend?
DK: I think [artificial intelligence] is the most exciting thing emerging and maturing right now, not just in health IT but in healthcare as a whole. I think overrated items might be in the health IT human capital space, but that's a bit out of my wheelhouse so I don't want rush to judgment.