Payer denials, prior authorization delays and underpayments are straining health system revenue cycles, while uninsured patients and those on high-deductible health plans struggle to pay for care. Manual workarounds layered onto aging revenue cycle management infrastructure make those pressures even harder to manage.
At Becker’s 11th Annual IT and Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI and Digital Health, revenue cycle leaders from NYC Health + Hospitals, Texas Health Resources and Cottage Health discussed how they weigh build vs. partner vs. wait decisions, and why proving ROI has to come before scaling solutions that use artificial intelligence.
The conversation was candid. One chief revenue officer explained why her system uses its EHR’s functionality even when another vendor’s is better. Another leader described an AI agent partnership that nearly doubled self-pay month over month compared to a previous partner, along with an autonomous coding rollout that failed.
Learnings include:
- How cost and EHR integration shape revenue cycle vendor decisions, and when organizations choose integrated functionality over standalone tools
- Which KPIs leaders use to hold vendor partners accountable, including collection rates for the most challenging patient groups
- Why Cottage Health is pursuing an enterprisewide AI strategy instead of separate revenue cycle, clinical and HR AI partners
- What one health system learned from a failed autonomous coding rollout, and why it kept pursuing partnerships