Whitepapers & E-Books

Ambulatory surgical centers are experiencing tremendous growth, with no plateau in sight. ASCs perform over 23 million procedures each year, and are forecasted to perform 68% of all orthopedic surgeries by the mid-2020s.

Yet, amid this surging demand, ASCs experience a myriad of challenges: from staffing shortages to streamlining the patient experience and lags in revenue cycle timelines.

To remain successful and ensure uninterrupted growth, ASCs and other healthcare facilities must improve their patients' financial and clinical journeys. 

In this whitepaper, you'll learn:

• The tremendous consequences of payment lag to ASCs
• The top three proven patient payment strategies to optimize RCM
• Patient-centric practices to help ASCs maximize growth via transparency, communication and tech-enabled automations

Health system margins are shrinking and 50 percent are operating at a loss. To boost revenues and margins, organizations are expanding their ambulatory care footprint. In fact, many health systems are actively looking to develop a portfolio of ambulatory care channels.

While ambulatory care is an important strategic move to expand patient access, increase revenue and improve margins, there are critical challenges to navigate.

This eBook – based on an advisory call of health system leaders from across the country with significant ambulatory care expertise – covers keys to successful ambulatory care expansion, such as:

Why understanding the local market is critical
Prioritizing the patient experience when designing sites of care
Different management skills needed for ASCs vs. inpatient care
The need to focus on ambulatory reimbursement models

As the market rapidly shifts to more ambulatory care, it is essential to understand and act on the keys to ambulatory success.

Private equity investment has been pouring into medical and dental practices -- with no signs of slowing down.

Often a big offer comes unsolicited, but is it a fair offer and will private equity partnership be a good fit? The lure of private equity money can be enticing but what are the risks and challenges? What help do you need to navigate this unfamiliar territory?

A new white paper from Physician Growth Partners answers critical questions for medical practices considering a private equity investment, such as:

• What are the benefits of working with private equity?
• Is it better to sell to a private equity group or a hospital system?
• Can you maintain independence in a private equity partnership?
• How are deals structured and what is “fair” compensation?
• What are the advantages of working with a transaction advisor?

Be prepared when a private equity firm approaches your practice.

Market shifts over the last two decades have resulted in a steep uptick in patient financial responsibility for care, with patient revenue now surpassing that of many healthcare organizations’ largest insurance payers. But patients face financial and economic challenges of their own, making it critical for organizations to be proactive about how to meet patients' needs and clearly communicate financial expectations.

This report outlines a clear strategy healthcare organizations can implement to improve patients' financial literacy and retain them amid an increasingly competitive marketplace.

You'll learn:

• Ways to lead with open and honest communication to provide compassionate financial care
• Strategies to create better connections with patients
• How to improve patients' knowledge about payments

Revenue cycle leaders know the staffing crisis in healthcare is not limited to clinical functions; there’s also a revenue cycle staffing crisis.

Based on increasing revenue cycle work and a shortage of skilled workers, it is impossible to hire enough people or ask current employees to work harder.

It’s time to work smarter, not harder. What does working smarter in the revenue cycle mean? It means finding innovative ways to do more with less.

Download for best practices on:

 

• Developing a smarter revenue cycle and administrative strategy
• Cutting down on outdated manual processes
• Streamlining existing processes with intelligent automation

  Learn more about what intelligent automation is, how it works, which revenue cycle tasks are best automated and what the benefits are

The healthcare industry is facing unique economic headwinds caused by high inflation, unrelenting workforce shortages and provider consolidation.

So how are leading health plans responding to these headwinds? That is exactly what Becker’s asked senior leaders from top health plans in a recent Advisory Call.

This Advisory Call recap summarizes specific actions leading health plans are taking, which include:

• Adapting their strategy and operations
• Revisiting pricing strategies and ways to share cost increases
• Leveraging value-based reimbursement
• Tackling administrative inefficiencies and reducing waste
• Identifying technology solutions to automate mundane tasks
• Steering care to lower cost settings
• And much, much more

Today’s economic headwinds aren’t going away anytime soon. Get ideas for your plan by hearing what top health plans said in this Advisory Call.

With 80 percent of health outcomes driven by nonclinical factors, it's increasingly necessary for health plans to look at member health through a more holistic lens.

These four use cases demonstrate how health plans can positively influence the full picture of member health, leading to better outcomes. 

Learn about health plans' role in:

 

• Post-discharge coaching
• Behavioral health coaching
• Oncology coaching and the future of cancer
• Cardiometabolic coaching with food delivery services

 

Healthcare payers are dealing with higher costs ­– and nowhere more so than in IT. Fortunately, cloud tools can help payers like you free themselves from expensive on-premises footprints and deliver higher levels of performance.  

• Learn how you can massively cut your data footprint and compute costs. 
• See where you can save time and benefit from AI and automation tools. 
• Understand the ways cloud can help you stay on top of regulations.

Healthcare payment systems are changing rapidly — and they need to. Errors, sluggish load times and complexity are common issues with payment systems. Until now. 

Optum commissioned a survey of senior health plan executives on payment processing trends as well as opportunities and barriers to improve payments. 

This report lays out the most pressing issues affecting payment processing and details top priorities for streamlining claims payment, including shifting to a paperless system and adopting automation. 

Get this report to learn: 

• Current state of health plans’ payment strategies
• Top pain points and most important priorities
• Key opportunities to streamline payments and barriers to making it happen
• What to look for when considering a payment solution

  Claims payment is changing fast. Don't be left behind. Learn how modern payment systems can boost health plans’ revenue and improve the customer experience. 

Health plans know that high-risk patients with chronic diseases use more care and account for more costs.

How can health plans simultaneously improve clinical outcomes, boost member satisfaction and lower costs?

The answer: by optimizing interventions for patients with chronic diseases that lead members to the right care at the right time. Effective chronic care interventions improve outcomes, close gaps in care and achieve meaningful cost savings and ROI. In fact, there are interventions with guaranteed year-one cost savings.   

Learn about these interventions in the new whitepaper – The ROI of Virtual Health: How Better Outcomes Drive Cost Savings for Health Plans.

This whitepaper explores: 

• What drives ROI for health plans
• How to achieve guaranteed costs savings and ROI from interventions in year 1
• How optimized interventions improve outcomes and member retention
• How to provide flexible options for your population and specific cohorts

Chronic kidney disease places an enormous burden on the healthcare system. Roughly 37 million Americans have CKD, though 9 in 10 adults with this condition don’t know they have it.

To date, kidney care has focused on diagnosis and treatment. But 1 in 4 patients "crash" into dialysis, where dialysis must be initiated urgently with no opportunity for patients and providers to discuss treatment alternatives or make optimal decisions.

What’s needed is "crash prevention" by using predictive intelligence to identify patients likely to need future dialysis, leading to earlier intervention.

Download this white paper on The Kidney Care Paradigm Shift. It focuses on:

 

• Predicting & preventing advanced CKD
• Identifying at-risk patients earlier through predictive intelligence
• Benefits of avoiding emergent dialysis

Treating CKD is costly and inefficient, but doesn’t have to be. Discover a new paradigm that leverages predictive intelligence for earlier intervention.

The healthcare workforce is at an extraordinary intersection of pressure, change and transformation. Organizations are coping with high levels of churn in front-line workers, quiet quitting by mid-level staff and early retirement of their most experienced clinicians.

This white paper identifies the root causes of workforce upheaval and offers five key strategies for healthcare organizations to methodically adjust policies, procedures and practices for immediate stability and long-term growth. 

Uncover strategies for balancing supply, demand and system transformation through: 

• Reconnecting talent to purpose and performance
• Finding the right relationship between people and technology
• Expanding the use of intelligent data
• Building an anywhere, anytime workforce
• Mapping an enterprise-wide workforce strategy

Despite tremendous investment in digital solutions, the vast majority of patients do not use their providers’ digital tools. This whitepaper examines how health systems leaders are focused on both delighting patients with personalized experiences and capturing high-fidelity data to ultimately drive revenue.

It also details how leading health systems like Intermountain Health have successfully deployed automation-based solutions to the tune of 68% completion of pre-visit registration and intake and a 300% increase in co-payment collections.

Additionally, you will learn:

• How digital access drives patient loyalty and why it matters.
• Why the front end is where revenue capture goes wrong.
• How to deliver a unified approach to patient access.
• Best practices for transforming patient access in today’s environment.

Hospitals have clinical documentation software specifically tailored to help them run smoother, more efficiently and decrease documentation time.

Most ASCs do not. 

As a result, ASCs deal with inefficient, server-based technology, spending an increasing amount of time on clinical documentation frustrating clinicians and administrative staff.   

Learn how ASCs are increasing efficiency and reducing costs by switching to a clinical documentation solution tailored to ASCs' unique needs. 

Find out how your ASC can experience:   

• A 10-minute reduction in MD documentation time per procedure
• A 15-minute reduction in administrative billing time per procedure
• An increase in revenue from improved coding and billing accuracy
• An increase in patient volume due to increased referrals from the software’s ability to track and manage referring physicians

 

To thrive in a competitive market, hospitals must have technology that can create a modern digital experience while managing complex patient access processes.

However, these requirements are far beyond an electronic health record's core clinical data management capabilities.

Download this white paper to explore how combining integrated patient access, intake and engagement solutions with your EHR can fill gaps, increase ROI, and enhance its value and effectiveness.

Learning points:

 

• Ensuring data integrity to prevent denials with intelligent automation
• Expediting financial clearance using accurate cost estimates and payment processing
• Enabling end-to-end prior authorization automation
• Increasing staff performance and accountability with systematic reporting 

The pandemic has underscored the power of nurses, who make up the largest group of healthcare professionals in the U.S. But high turnover, retention issues and disproportionate retirement rates in the field are presenting healthcare facilities with major challenges and risks to quality. Between now and 2023, it is anticipated there will be nearly 195,000 openings for registered nurses each year.

This white paper offers a collection of short articles and tips sheets on recruiting and retaining nurses and healthcare staff, as well as how to make their work more manageable and gratifying.

Read more to learn about:

Five ways to attract new nurses to the field
Steps for boosting retention while recruiting
Technology that improves staffing efficiency and enables on-demand work

Moving applications to the cloud offers significant operational and financial advantages to health systems, but making this transition is far more than just a "lift and shift" exercise.

During a panel at Becker’s 7th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Annual Meeting, five health IT experts discussed the benefits of moving to the cloud and best practices for a seamless transition.

This whitepaper offers a summary of the discussion and includes insights from leader at the following health systems:

University of Maryland Medical System (Silver Spring)
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville)
Michigan Medicine in (Ann Arbor)
CommonSpirit Health (Chicago)

Healthcare workers continue to experience alarming levels of burnout, a key factor in the projected shortage of more than 3 million+ essential healthcare workers and 140,000 physicians by 2033.

Healthcare organizations are getting creative to tackle the issue by rolling out flexible staffing initiatives, well-being programs and more. One approach, however, is being overlooked: leveraging the right technology that enables patients to do more, reducing staff burden.

Download this whitepaper from Yosi Health to learn more about the role patients play in mitigating burnout among healthcare workers.

Key learning points: 

• 3 key areas/trends patients and consumers are looking for
• How empowering your patients improves health outcomes and financial results
• How engaged patients reduce staff burnout and administrative burden

You know your operating margin, but do you know your panel size, your number of "recently active patients" or your patient leakage rate? These numbers drive revenue and profit.

A survey from CHIME-Cerner found that nearly 40 percent of providers lose at least 10 percent of revenue to leakage, as empowered patients leave to seek innovative care options that better meet their needs.

Health systems need to evaluate their key business levers. This may lead to diversification strategies that enhance primary care service offerings, strengthen patient and physician satisfaction, improve the bottom line and create competitive advantage. 

This white paper describes key metrics healthcare leaders need to know and strategies to pursue to diversify revenue and create differentiation.

Insights include:

 

• Calculating patient panel numbers and customer lifetime value 
• Effective strategies for provider diversification and differentiation
• Identify drivers of patient acquisition, retention and loyalty to optimize your portfolio and boost revenue

Supply chains remain fragile. As of December 2022, healthcare product shortages remained five times higher than pre-pandemic levels. Other key supply chain issues are workforce shortages, cost containment and lack of supply chain visibility.

Supply chain leaders have an urgent need to better understand product availability. To address these challenges, create more resilient supply chains and reduce product shortages, leaders don't need another dashboard. They need actionable data and insights. 

A new white paper outlines three key strategies to increase supply chain visibility and decrease product shortages. 

Key focus areas include:

• Leveraging the data in your ERP system 
• Using a supply chain data model with prospective information 
• Streamlining pharmacy operations
• How Renown Health is using data to reduce product shortages

Facing frequent no-shows, high staff turnover and resource draining, paper-based processes in patient access, Wayne HealthCare was due for a digital upgrade.

Read the case study to learn how using EngageCare self-service technology to transition administrative and financial tasks to patients helped Wayne improve patient safety, reduce no-shows and increase staff efficiency.

Download a copy of the case study to learn how Wayne:

• Reduced denials 80 percent
• Decreased no-shows and cancellations, saving revenue
• Reallocated staff and eliminated need to fill 5 vacant positions

Supply chain inefficiencies cost hospitals $25.7 billion annually. With the right strategies, however, supply chain teams can not only lower supply chain and healthcare costs but also serve as a direct bridge to improved care quality.

At the Becker's Supply Chain Leadership Virtual Forum, six healthcare supply chain experts discussed their systems' supply chain transformation efforts and shared how supply chains can become a strategic asset when bolstered by the power of data, standardization and process efficiency. This report offers seven takeaways from the discussion.

Key learnings:

• How labor challenges are affecting supply chain teams
• Top priorities for healthcare supply chain leaders in 2022
• The key to successful supply chain transformations
  
  

Patient safety is a primary concern for all health systems and medical devices play a critical role in supporting the safe and effective delivery of patient care.

Key Takeaways:

• Health systems can support medical device availability through optimized preventative maintenance schedules and standardized workflows.
• Dedicated monitoring and remediation of OEM-reported FDA alerts and recalls can minimize the potential impact on device availability and patient safety.
• Patient safety should be a key consideration throughout a health system's capital planning process 

Learn how we worked with this fully-integrated healthcare system to deliver a whole-person approach to care for its employees and spouses with chronic conditions.

Results include:

• A coordinated experience across conditions for people living with both diabetes and hypertension Multiyear impact on clinical diabetes measures, including reduced HbA1c levels and a fewer hypoglycemic readings
• Measurable impact on systolic and diastolic blood pressure rates among those with uncontrolled hypertension
• Reduced spending incurred through medical care, emergency room visits and pharmacy costs associated with managing chronic conditions, resulting in a positive ROI

Before COVID-19, the opioid epidemic was the nation's most consequential public health threat. The pandemic has magnified the impact of the opioid crisis on communities as unemployment, homelessness and behavioral health disorder rates soar.

Learn how eight organizations across the country have used technology and collaboration to achieve the following:

• 61 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions
• 32 percent reduction in opioid deaths
• 50 percent decrease in emergency department visits for patients with high utilization patterns
• $34 million in cost savings

This downloadable whitepaper will cover:

• Four proven strategies for addressing the opioid epidemic on an organizational and community level
• Statewide efforts to reduce opioid prescribing and use, including implementation of seven best practices for prescription opioids
• How collaboration helped achieve measurable results outside opioids — including decreased ED visits and significant cost savings

Unknown data silos can be detrimental to healthcare organizations.

Unknown data silos can be detrimental to healthcare organizations.

All along the continuum of care, hidden data silos prevent health systems from achieving the goals of interoperability, namely, the ability to put the right information in the right hands at the right time for better care. Without a clear idea of where data silos exist, achieving true data integration is impossible.

The stakes are high: Lack of data interoperability results in inefficient, disconnected care and undermines value-based care and population health. 

Download this white paper to learn how to:

• Overcome top data sharing and access challenges in health systems
• Unlock trapped data in healthcare's 9 billion faxed documents sent each year
• Implement three strategies to eliminate data silos in healthcare

The benefits of cloud adoption aren't disputed, but many healthcare organizations are still determining which adoption strategies best address their technological, cultural and operational challenges.

During a recent peer-to-peer discussion hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, healthcare information and technology leaders shared their own experiences and common challenges they've faced in adopting cloud strategies. Download the white paper to see their insights on best practices, goals, criteria and metrics for integrating cloud technology.

Learn how to:

• Make internal cultural shifts to overcome cloud adoption concerns
• Guide your decisions about implementation and integration strategies
• Understand the impact your cloud strategy has on care quality

To reimagine care delivery and meet patients where they are, hospitals and health systems must embrace a strong culture of innovation. This means being customer-obsessed, enabling leaders to make fast, data-driven decisions, and learning to be agile in making those decisions.

During a session at Becker's 10th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, healthcare leaders from across the country discussed how their organizations are engaging in innovation and lessons they've learned. This report offers a summary of the discussion and features insights from:

Houston Methodist
UC San Diego (Calif.) Health
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Seattle) 

Most healthcare organizations embrace the idea of using digital technologies to improve the quality of care, enable clinicians and increase efficiency.

However, organizations are often held back in their digital transformation efforts by legacy IT systems and disconnected point solutions.

There's a better way. Healthcare organizations are discovering the transformational benefits of a single application platform that provides a unified, connected view of their data, patients and clinicians.

Download this white paper to learn how innovative healthcare organizations are leveraging this single platform to:

• Accelerate the speed to adapt to changing care requirements
• Improve clinician and patient management
• Dramatically heighten patient satisfaction
• Achieve seamless governance, risk and compliance management

 

To understand how healthcare organizations are using cloud technology to deliver smart, efficient, and cost-effective care, Becker’s Hospital Review and VMware brought together a panel of Health IT experts for an advisory call to discuss their experiences and share best
practices.

Download the white paper to learn key takeaways with valuable, first-hand insights on how to
incorporate cloud into healthcare operations in the most effective way.

Key Points:

• Learn how to control security risks by limiting cloud provider and integrations
• Create criteria to evaluate cloud hosting providers for your organization’s specific needs
• Adopt a “why not cloud” approach to assessing cloud investments

During the pandemic, the role of telehealth technology has expanded greatly. According to Becker’s, about 80% of Americans believe that the quality of telehealth could match that of in-person consultations – up from 43% pre-pandemic. Now, emergency medicine could be the next frontier for telehealth to improve timely access to treatment and provide vital follow-up care.

Explore further possible uses for telehealth such as:

• Field emergency responses connecting unskilled responders to medical help
• Providing support to smaller hospitals in underserved communities
• “Tele-triage” to help relieve ER overcrowding and screen patients awaiting treatment

In times of tight budgets and staffing challenges, technology such as artificial intelligence empower hospitals to run more sustainably.

AI patient monitoring helps hospitals minimize falls, cut costs and reduce the need for full time employees. Now it's time to bring digital nursing into the acute environment for truly flexible nursing teams.

Explore how AI and other digital care tools are making care more efficient in this white paper.

Key learnings:

• How digital care tools can reduce average sitter hours
• How AI patient monitoring can reduce patient falls
• How digital care tools can decrease fall alert response time

Technology can help reduce costs with automation and increased operational efficiency.

Get ready for next-level growth, productivity, and patient engagement with Health Cloud and Tableau CRM. The solution helped MIMIT get a holistic view of patient data with a single source of truth — and a 459% ROI in less than three months.

According to Nucleus Research, MIMIT Health:

Boosted productivity by 30%
Raised patient engagement
Reduced procedure scheduling from two weeks to two to five days
Cut inventory costs by 15%, or $150,000 a year

Patient-facing teams are all too familiar with referrals ending in a futile game of phone tag. While seemingly innocuous, not closing the loop means fewer visits, frustrated staff and patients, compromised health outcomes and lost revenue. This has become the unfortunate norm as healthcare trends toward consolidation and health systems that have complex provider networks — which are most prone to referral gaps.

This white paper explores the steps health systems can take to upgrade manual patient engagement to digital processes for closing referral gaps.

Read more to learn about:

• The inefficiencies in the referral management process + impact on patients and practitioners
• Opportunities for automation in patient engagement for referrals, like SMS or phone-based notifications, and how health systems can get started implementing these
• The success Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin realized in using its EHR-embedded patient engagement platform to create a closed-loop referral management workflow

Accessing clinical patient data can be like drinking from a fire hose. From diagnoses and labs to genomics and social determinants of health, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming. Yet despite all this available data, painting an accurate picture of an individual’s health can be a significant challenge.

So why is it so difficult to create a patient's "digital twin?"

In this insight brief, we explore some of the common obstacles to gathering, integrating and leveraging clinical data, such as:

• Siloed information within the EHR and between health IT systems
• Varied data accessibility
• Inadequate capture of detail or specificity
• Inconsistent data structure; and
• Variations in clinical terminology

The Sanford Health Fargo (N.D.) Sterile Processing team is leading an effort to optimize physician preference cards, in collaboration with the Supply Chain and Perioperative teams, resulting in a 90%+ preference card accuracy rate. To date, they have achieved $1.4 million in savings through on-hand inventory reduction alone, not including labor and productivity gains.

With the help of Tecsys’ Elite™ Healthcare POU technology, Sanford Health has automated and systemized data capture, closed the data loop on preference card picking cycles, eliminated redundant processes and driven down on-hand inventory value.

This success story documents their journey at each step of the way. 

Key Takeaways:

• Understand how an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement can increase cost savings, drive operational efficiency and reduce waste.
• Measure inventory performance with accurate analytics and analyze real-time data using the right technology.
• Identify the financial impact of unused materials resulting from out-of-date surgeon preference cards.

When it comes to member experience, the pressure is on. Every health plan cares deeply about their members’ journey, but many lack the technology and still provide a fragmented, disjointed member experience. Health plans must reexamine how they engage with members to deliver seamless, personalized, retail-like experiences.

In this new white paper, discover how leading plans are leveraging data and artificial intelligence to turbocharge the member experience, transform member interactions and drive engagement across all channels.

Download to learn how health plans can:  

• Use existing data and AI to turbocharge the contact center 

• Create a holistic view of members to transform their experience 

• Drive personalization with existing member data 

• Overcome barriers to technology adoption and build greater trust with members

Profound advancements in medical imaging are poised to dramatically shorten time to diagnosis and treatment. However, with more sophisticated imaging comes more data and the need for more computing power to support high-speed information sharing across the care continuum. Additionally, healthcare technology leaders will have to find new ways to achieve more dynamic cybersecurity amid rising rates of malware and ransomware attacks targeting healthcare organizations. 
 
Maintaining, growing and securing on-premises data storage presents major challenges for hospitals and health systems in such an environment. This white paper examines why cloud storage and computing will become essential supports for hospitals and health systems keen to make the most of medical imaging technology advancements.
 
In this eBook, you will learn:

 

• How health systems are reaping the benefits of cloud technology for medical imaging
• The four pillars for optimized medical imaging data use and storage

Given the breadth and depth of potential use cases, one thing is clear – more and more people will find themselves working in environments where ML plays a critical role. And thanks to the emergence of low-code and no-code software, ML is no longer the exclusive preserve of programmers, data scientists, and people who paid attention in math class. More of us can – and will – be involved in developing and deploying practical ML solutions.

This eGuide will help you understand:

 

• The key concepts behind ML and common applications
• How it’s becoming more useful to people at all levels of organizations

 

At virtually every stage of a patient’s wellbeing, different forms of technology and software support the expansion of better healthcare. As the reliance on technology grows, ensuring that these lifesaving systems don’t break under the strain is imperative.

  To keep operations running smoothly, healthcare IT professionals must perform regular and exhaustive testing. Fortunately, the introduction of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) has made testing easier to deliver.

In this eBook from Keysight Technologies, you will discover  

• How automation can improve workflow management to help physicians and patients alike
• How AI-driven test automation helps your EMR become more interoperable and user-friendly
• Six critical tasks that can be optimized with robotic process automation
• The importance of testing both on-site and wearable medical devices

 

Please fill out the form to download the eBook.

Health system leaders face an operational paradox. Operating rooms, inpatient beds and infusion chairs appear to be available. Yet, the reality is often very different. These assets experience dramatic peaks and valleys in usage. As a result, patients receive appointments, but when they show up for care at peak times, they have to wait.

Other asset-intensive industries like airlines or package delivery services face similar challenges. However, through sophisticated modeling and simulations, organizations in these industries can predict and match supply to demand with considerable accuracy. Every day, millions of packages are delivered on time and scores of travelers safely reach their destinations. The healthcare sector needs the same types of capacity-optimization tools.

These were the overarching themes that emerged during a hospital operations summit as part of Becker's Hospital Review's 12th Annual Meeting in Chicago. Dozens of hospital executives participated in the summit. This white paper is based on their conversations and includes specific learnings from:

• Rush University Medical Center in Chicago
• UCHealth in Aurora, Colo.
• Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Healthcare leaders face major financial and operational challenges every day. Amid historic headwinds, hospital and health system leaders must find ways to protect their organization’s bottom line while identifying and pursing growth opportunities.  

This new ebook features short, must-read articles on 10 key topics facing C-suite leaders today, with ideas on how to thrive amid today’s challenges.  Learn about:

 

• How one CEO keeps staff turnover under 1 percent 
• Growth opportunities despite recessionary trends
• Succeeding despite the lack of access to capital
• Overcoming net operating losses
• How partnerships help health systems thrive

  Get crisp summations of today’s most pressing challenges with practical, real-world solutions you can apply to your organization right now. 

As hospitals and health systems grapple with unrelenting staff shortages and retention issues, financial leaders must strategize how they can ease the burden on their teams — while also boosting productivity and freeing up analysts' time for more pressing projects. It's a tall order, but some organizations are seeing success with the right partnership.

In this white paper, you'll learn how Red Oak, Iowa-based Montgomery County Memorial Hospital leveraged technology to streamline its financial processes, enhance productivity and reduce month-end time to close by 50 percent.

You'll also get more details on how the hospital: 

• Streamlined accounting functions within one login application
• Employed its EMR to help with analysis and reporting
• Navigated implementation challenges (during the onset of COVID-19, no less)
• Increased staff satisfaction and buy-in

The pandemic has shined a spotlight on revenue cycle management, forcing organizations to rethink their RCM strategy.

That’s because RCM today is fraught with challenges. It is labor intensive, exists in silos, burdens employees, lacks data and results in revenue leakage.

A new whitepaper lays out a recipe for better RCM. Key elements of better RCM include making it holistic and more automated, using prescriptive analytics and payer performance management. Results include better communication, improved employee satisfaction, decreased revenue leakage and more data to use when engaging in negotiations with payers.

In this whitepaper, you will learn:

• Why a holistic RCM approach is far better than silos.
• How RCM automation improves efficiency and employee satisfaction.
• How process improvements can maximize revenue and improve team performance.
• The importance of predictive analytics and payer performance management.

Today, four major, interconnected challenges continue to confront revenue cycle leaders as they work to ensure their organizations’ financial stability and future. The challenges, which include negative operating margins, staffing shortages, growing front-end denials, and higher patient expectations for their financial experience, have combined to create the perfect storm. 

Rather than fall further behind, revenue cycle leaders are rethinking workflows and reimagining how work gets done alongside the latest advancements in technology. There are entire organizations that are writing a new playbook, establishing new paradigms for truly doing more with less, and defining a completely new way to tackle these long-standing revenue cycle challenges.

In this whitepaper, you will learn:

• Why now is the time for revenue cycle leaders to move beyond digitizing specific workflows and instead shift their efforts to intelligent automation
• New approaches to evolving patient access, with a focus on eliminating denials
• Best practices and KPIs for analyzing your denial management efforts
• How health systems are deploying advanced technologies to drive end-to-end connectivity throughout the entire revenue cycle and reducing the overall cost to collect

Becker's Hospital Review and PwC recently surveyed 120 revenue cycle leaders, C-suite leaders, VPs and directors.

Among the survey's key insights:

Labor shortages are decimating revenue cycle teams
84 percent of organizations are behind on cash collections
Denials are up, in some case 20 percent higher than previously

But there are solutions to accelerate the revenue cycle and improve cash collections. See the survey results and insights from PwC revenue cycle experts that highlight the importance of:

• Leveraging data to decrease denials
• Using automation and technology to improve efficiency
• Upskilling revenue cycle teams and forming strategic partnership

This year, the healthcare industry will continue to face increasing pressures and unprecedented challenges.

Trends in healthcare payments will shift as the industry weathers financial instability, scarce resources, and staff burnout.

But even amid changing competitive and regulatory landscapes, many healthcare providers are thriving. They’re finding ways to do more with less, improve patient outcomes, and drive innovation.

Download this report to unlock current trends in healthcare payments for 2023, as well as proven strategies to help revenue cycle teams succeed.

What's Inside:

• Dive deep into top trends in healthcare payments for 2023
• Find new opportunities to foster financial growth
• Discover revenue cycle strategies to achieve your mission

The Department of Veteran Affairs has made significant changes to improve how it partners with hospitals in supporting Veteran care, but hospitals are still struggling with old processes that drain resources and impact timely and sufficient reimbursements. This whitepaper explains the intricacies and challenging processes of the VA so providers can successfully capture revenue for these complex claims.

You'll learn:  

• How changes in the VA influence Veteran benefits today
• Pitfalls that make it challenging to work with the VA 
• Effective ways to capture reimbursement for services rendered to Veterans

Health systems are painfully aware of the complexities of revenue cycle management and understand the need for RCM partners. In fact, 93% of health systems rely on at least one RCM partner.

But there are different reasons for pursuing RCM partnerships and very different approaches to partnership. Which approach and partners are best for your organization?

Here are insights from new research conducted with the Health Management Academy:

• 4 key reasons health systems pursue RCM partnerships
• 2 primary approaches to RCM partnership, and the key differences between them
• Factors to consider when vetting and evaluating RCM partnerships
• Why so many leading health systems are considering enterprise RCM partnerships

The key takeaway: RCM partnerships are necessary but they're not all alike. Understand the differences to make the best RCM decision for your health system.

In today’s economic environment, health systems can’t afford the increased denials and prolonged accounts receivable days caused by inaccurate front-end data. As staff shortages persist and labor costs increase, manual workflows to review and correct patient data on the back end are not sustainable.

To succeed, revenue cycle leaders need to transform the first interaction many patients have in their care experience into a competitive differentiator, manage ever-changing payer rules, and navigate an exacerbated workforce shortage. Leading health systems are automating front-end processes to eliminate back-end administrative burden – removing patient and staff hassles that compromise quality, impact reliability, and escalate cost.

In this whitepaper, you will learn:

• Why common approaches to revenue cycle improvement fall short
• The role of intelligent automation in strengthening the front end of revenue cycles with higher accuracy and faster payment, without additional headcount
• How a leading health system decreased authorization-related write-offs by 55% and saved nearly 3,000 staff hours

High deductible health plans (HDHPs) have shifted the already-complex payer reimbursement burden onto the shoulders of consumers who are unprepared to bear it.

Consumers, on the one hand, need increased support to understand their bills and figure out how to pay them. On the other hand, patients with more skin in the game are becoming more demanding about the quality of their customer experience.

These changes necessitate a new patient payment model that focuses on delivering convenience and clear communication to patients, driving both quicker payments and increased patient satisfaction.

Download this whitepaper to learn:

• The current state of patient collections, with data
• How to help patients take charge of their new responsibility
• How to identify hidden coverage
• How to increase the likelihood of quick, easy payment

The economic landscape of the healthcare market has been forever altered by the COVID-19 crisis. Existing challenges have intensified, and the pace of change is accelerating, raising the bar for organizations to adapt strategically and quickly.

Download the e-book to learn more about how health leaders can ready their organization for growth with forward-thinking strategies that include:

• Meeting the consumer on their terms
• Adapting to new competition
• The growing role of strategic partnerships
• Mastering the new indicators of growth
• Tracking the spend of the health care dollar

Operating health systems and physician practices has always been hard, but COVID-19 has created extraordinary profitability challenges in 2020. Lower volumes, changing case and payer mixes and greater operating margin anxiety make revenue optimization more essential than ever.

We asked physician management and healthcare organization leaders to share their strategies for overcoming the considerable challenges of this altered landscape. They offer 10 strategies for using data and analytics to better manage capacity, coordinate care and optimize revenues, including:

• Tracking real-time practice COVID-19 volumes
• Managing productivity and modifying physician incentive compensation
• Capturing charges efficiently and accurately at the point of care
• Improving throughput across the continuum

The white paper features expert views from:

• Dennis Deruelle, MD – Executive Director of Hospital Medicine, American Physician Partners
• Andrea Funk, RN, MEd, CPHQ – Vice President of Integrated Acute Care Operations, US Acute Care Solutions
• Derick D. Perkins – Founder and Managing Partner, Metis Advisors LLC

COVID-19 has pushed healthcare delivery beyond its breaking point, heightening the urgent need for accelerated patient care, improved clinical efficiencies and secure clinical communication with real-time critical patient updates.

Before the arrival of COVID-19, specific environmental trends were challenging the healthcare industry, such as acquisitions of smaller health systems by larger health systems, clinician shortages and burnout. These trends had already created an urgent demand for clinical communication platforms (CCP) that would work securely across growing networks of diverse care provider organizations. The arrival of COVID-19 has applied untold new pressures to already strained systems.

In this white paper, you will learn about:

• The impact and cost of COVID-19 on healthcare
• How clinical collaboration platforms improved communication during COVID-19
• Where you will see cost savings from leveraging clinical collaboration platforms
• What to look for in a clinical collaboration platform in order to achieve savings
• How clinical collaboration platforms can help your organization increase efficiency and achieve return on investment

When it comes to blood transfusions, there simply is no room for error. Despite advances in technology and process controls, incidents involving errors that could result in wrong transfusions are all too common. To see real improvements, a new approach to transfusion safety is needed.

Point-of-care blood management systems can help reduce transfusion errors while improving efficiency and lowering costs. Discover how the implementation of this system helped one hospital save $436,000 annually.

In this whitepaper, you'll learn:

• The problems hospital blood supply chains face today
• Why the role of point-of-care blood management systems is more critical than ever
• How point-of-care blood management systems help support transfusion safety, compliance and efficiency while reducing costs

Patient readmission rate is a key metric used to assess a hospital or health system's quality of care. High readmissions are a big indicator of a failure to properly address patient health management.

This white paper outlines how one health system successfully reduced readmissions for chronically ill patients by utilizing remote patient monitoring.

In this whitepaper, you'll learn:

• Best-practices for implementing a sustainable and effective remote patient management program.
• How Grand Forks, N.D.-based Altru Health System achieved significant reductions in readmissions for specific clinical case uses and expanded its remote patient monitoring program.
• How remote patient monitoring programs can increase patient-provider communication, improve patient engagement and encourage patient self-management.

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had profound, rippling effects on reproductive healthcare and access to contraceptive services — immediately. Industry leaders are bracing for change.

In this whitepaper, you'll learn how community health center leaders and their organizations are adapting to the rise in demand for contraceptive care and how they're addressing barriers to providing services for patients.

Read more for insights on:

• The emerging role of primary care providers as key figures in contraceptive counseling, service delivery and access, and how leaders can support them in this role
• Navigating barriers to contraceptive care, such as insurance challenges
• Empowering staff to make time for contraceptive counseling and education and patient-centered care

Are we doing everything we can for vascular patients? 

CAD and PAD patients have always faced roadblocks along their post-intervention care journey, from costly treatments to finding the motivation and time for managing their conditions. Additionally, there's a disconnect between physicians' and patients' views on the value of digital tools in adhering to care plans. 

This white paper from Year 3 of Abbott's Beyond Intervention research into the global state of vascular care contains key insights from over 2,000 patients, healthcare providers and healthcare leaders on how we might improve patient adherence and outcomes outside healthcare facilities. 

Key learnings include:

 

• The importance of a comprehensive care experience within the healthcare system
• The biggest challenges for patients in adhering to post-discharge care plans
• How healthcare leaders and providers can provide multiple touchpoints and leverage digital tools to make adhering to a care plan at home easier for patients

The 100-year-old Mantoux tuberculin skin test requires two office visits and a highly trained eye from the physician to make a diagnosis. Human error is inevitable, and it's common for patients to miss their second appointment, wasting office time and sending them back to square one. 

For nearly 20 years, the Interferon Gamma Release Assay — a simple blood test — has offered a more efficient, more accurate alternative, yet 3 out of 4 healthcare providers default to the century old method. In this white paper, Quest Diagnostics will explore the facts and debunk the myths and misconceptions that have surrounded IGRAs since their inception. 

Key learning points: 

• How IGRA blood tests use the latest field-proven medical technologies to yield a conclusive result 97 percent of the time
• How the IGRA saves patients and physicians time and stress
• Why the IGRA is ultimately the most cost-effective choice

Precision oncology has come a long way — equipped with new and better information gleaned from genomic testing, more hospitals and health systems are building comprehensive programs around this form of medicine. But it is no easy task: Leaders initiating such programs must be prepared with the teams, processes, workflows and partnerships needed to ensure success and standardized care.

In this white paper, Duarte, Calif.-based City of Hope shares five key lessons learned from building their precision oncology program, as well as the success they're seeing in patient engagement and earlier detection.

You'll also learn:

• How precision oncology has changed over time, and how the more recent "panoramic" approach is better positioning clinicians to choose the right treatments for patients
• Why standardization of care in precision oncology is critical for equitable care
• The benefits that a precision oncology program can bring to patients and communities + the infrastructure and processes organizations should consider in building a successful program

Diagnostic errors affect an estimated 12 million adults in the U.S. each year — compromising patients' well-being and facilities' bottom line, as these errors cost the healthcare system approximately $20 billion annually. Especially at organizations embracing value-based care, leaders must explore the root causes of these errors, which can range from unconscious biases to lack of clinical resources, and consider how clinical decision support tools may fit into their workflows.

In this white paper, you'll learn how clinical decision support tools can augment physicians' reasoning and enable them to visualize patient data, access specialist knowledge and identify trends to improve efficiency, accuracy and quality of care. You'll also find insights on:

• The dangers of unconscious bias in diagnostics
• The impact of inappropriate referrals
• Improving patient satisfaction and health equity

Supply disruptions to surgical drapes and gowns create frustration and additional work for operating room staff forced to hunt down alternatives.

Healthcare leaders shouldn’t underestimate the importance of supplying staff with the right operating room products to ensure they feel confidently protected to care for patients.

This eBook explores how supply reliability affects clinical teams and the solutions that can help mitigate surgical drape and gown challenges in the OR.

Please fill out the form to download the eBook.

Learning objectives: 

• Appropriate protection and comfort for any procedure
• The value of choosing the right drape and gown for each procedure
• How a healthy supply chain with state-side manufacturing can help keep shelves reliably stocked.

Early identification of sepsis and consistent evidence-based care must be a priority for hospital administrators and clinical leaders. Driven by lengthy stays, sepsis is the most expensive condition for U.S. hospitals, is a major driver for readmissions, and is a top reason for in-hospital patient mortality.

To tackle these challenges, Conway (Ark.) Regional Medical Center focused on patient monitoring to improve compliance rates and make doing the right thing easier for clinicians.

Read this case study to learn how Conway Regional: 

• Identifies patients with sepsis earlier with continuous alerts and reminders that guide care
• Improved SEP-1 bundle compliance by more than 20 percent over four months 
• Achieved cumulative savings of $384,000 in four months 

 

What would member satisfaction and business profitability look like in your organization if you could ensure patients consistently get the right care at the right time? When over- or underutilization occurs, the impact ripples to all patients/members and your business. Medical Review Institute of America (MRIoA) has modernized utilization management to ensure appropriate care. Find out how with digitalization, advanced analytics and evidence-based clinical guidance, and greater connectivity between health plans, patients and top medical specialists across the nation, independent clinical review has become the solution health plans, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), third-party administrators (TPAs), government, and self-insureds can’t compete without.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Learn how modern utilization management solves multiple challenges for healthcare organizations
• Understand the keys to empowering patients and reducing unnecessary costs by ensuring appropriate care
• Find out how modern independent clinical review works seamlessly with your organization to expand your capabilities

Facing long wait times, heavy administrative burden and rising physician dissatisfaction, leaders at Birmingham, Ala.-based UAB Hospital knew they needed to revamp scheduling at its Kirklin Clinic.

The so-called "superclinic" houses hundreds of physicians in nearly three dozen specialties and represents one of the busiest outpatient centers in the U.S.

During this webinar, leaders will share how the Kirklin Clinic implemented an intelligent room scheduling system to address these challenges and grow patient volume without expanding physical space. Learn how the hospital achieved:

• A 7.4 percent increase in patient visits and 4.7 percent increase in clinic session volume
• Shortened patient wait times
• Reduced administrative burden and higher physician satisfaction

Efforts to empower patients via digital tools accelerated amid the pandemic, as leaders worked to increase access to care. New data from more than 38,800 hospitals and health systems worldwide suggests these strategies are working — though there is still room for improvement.

CHIME's 2022 Digital Health Most Wired survey assessed healthcare organization's digital health capabilities and usage across eight key categories, including patient engagement. This report offers a summary of the survey's patient engagement key findings, including a look at how organizations have improved patient engagement and what the intersection of patient empowerment and digital health will look like in the future.

In this report, you'll learn:

• Which tools the majority of systems now have and consider table stakes
• Which tools are most underutilized by systems
• How to maximize staff and patient engagement

Providers making transformational investments to succeed in value-based care often face the challenge of doing so while still generating revenue in fee-for-service (FFS). To bridge the two worlds, providers must prioritize strategies such as growing chronic care management (CCM) billing and automated tech such as Deviceless Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM).

This case study features the journeys of four such Stratum Med provider groups that implemented Deviceless RPM as the catalyst to overcome staffing shortages while extending care to rising-risk patients and preventing avoidable utilization to generate shared savings.

• Discover how Deviceless RPM strategies can increase staffing efficiency by up to 15x 
• Learn from leaders at organizations in different stages of transitioning to value-based care
• Discover how Deviceless RPM can lead to improved chronic conditions outcomes and financial savings

As COVID-19 continues, with new variants emerging, the amount of new research and data about COVID-19 testing and treatment is overwhelming, making it hard for clinicians to keep up.

This new e-book provides brief snapshots — one page each — summarizing the latest data and insights on important COVID-19 topics.

Topics include:

• Research shows Paxlovid cuts long COVID-19 risk
• Pediatric cases of COVID-19 jump
• How telehealth can increase access to Paxlovid
• Updates from Pfizer on boosters and a combo vaccine
• How pharmacists delivering vaccines lower healthcare costs
• The growth of new variants
• The impact of COVID-19 on gut bacteria and infections
• Data on COVID-19 and flu coinfections
• Updates on future COVID-19 vaccines and treatment

With tuberculosis diagnoses falling significantly during the first two years of the pandemic, it's more important than ever that reliable TB testing is in place. Despite the availability of newer blood testing options that are easy to perform and deliver accurate results, the 100-year old TB skin test is still widely used.

In this whitepaper, Quest Diagnostics outlines the benefits of TB blood tests, including cost-savings, patient experience and more.

Key learning points:

• How TB blood tests reduce patient visits
• The objective, accurate results provided by blood tests
• How blood tests yield cost savings for both patients and providers

Manual flushing can be time-consuming for overburdened healthcare staff, but hospitals can safely minimize the amount of time spent on this critical task with automated flush delivery technology. 

This whitepaper summarizes five clinical studies that reveal how the KangarooTM feed/flush pumps with automatic flushing technology from Cardinal HealthTM are benefiting patients and hospitals. 

Key learning points:

• Potential cost-savings from automated flushing 
• The benefits of automated flushing vs. manual syringe flushing
• Solving for dehydration with automated flushing

Gundersen Health System receives hundreds of prescription refill requests daily — a time-consuming, manual process with redundant tasks and errors.

Now, Gundersen is using an AI solution to automatically transcribe data in its renewal requests. This solution cuts down on manual clicks and keystrokes that can lead to medication errors and contribute to clinician burnout.
 
Download to learn how Gundersen has used this AI solution to: 

• Improve "clean sigs" by 202 percent
• Automatically import 84 percent of prescription renewal data
• Save 100 hours of clinician data entry time  
• Improve safety and decrease risk of errors

Hospitals are fighting an ongoing battle against unrecognized patient deterioration, alarm fatigue, opioid-induced respiratory depression, sepsis, unplanned extubation and other preventable conditions. In this whitepaper, we will review the scope of these patient safety matters, inadequacies of current practices, the emergence of clinical surveillance and a strategy to implement continuous clinical surveillance that helps enhance patient safety and outcomes.

Key points that readers will learn include:

• The clinical and financial impact of alarm fatigue and these adverse patient conditions
• How continuous clinical surveillance is different from patient monitoring and alarm management and focuses on mitigating non-clinically actionable alerts and notifications
• Published results that hospitals have achieved with continuous clinical surveillance

To be successful, every DSO must strive for a strong and dynamic procurement strategy. Large rapidly growing specialty DSOs are no exception.

One multispecialty DSO with more than 180 locations was able to save about $3 million annually by executing a strategic procurement initiative that drove savings towards their bottom line and increased ordering efficiencies among their practices in the process. This was all done while maintaining physicians' and clinicians' autonomy regarding clinically sensitive items they have access to.

Download the case study below to learn how SourceClub helped this multispecialty DSO save millions and achieve success

Today's most significant business operation problem in dental offices is repetitive, consistent, and boring manual processes and tasks. DentalRobot solves this problem with its proprietary automation platform specially designed for dental practices, and its unique approach of Pre-Built Robots and Automated Workflows.

Regardless of how you built the processes in your DSO, MSO, or Group, DentalRobot provides a custom-fit automation solution that matches your current context and vision for operations and growth. We understand each specialty and its journey. We impact your organization's outcomes by rapidly automating every process from insurance verification or EOB posting to Accelerated Patient Scheduling or Customized Treatment Plan Follow-Ups.