How automating your revenue cycle can empower staff, improve the patient financial experience, and drive financial success

Revenue cycle professionals are facing more adversity than ever before. Constant challenges, such as ever-changing rules, staffing shortages, and thin operating margins place immense strain on healthcare organizations and revenue cycle teams. At the same time, healthcare organizations have the momentous task of improving the patient financial experience and increasing revenue capture—neither of which are an easy feat, especially with an already overburdened team.

When healthcare organizations invest in solutions that automate processes and effectively leverage resources, they can operate more efficiently, allowing staff to focus on more complex tasks without becoming overtaxed.

Strategically used, automation can optimize revenue cycle performance, streamline workflows, and ultimately improve both patient and staff satisfaction.

According to a recent Gallup study, when employees have enough time to complete all of their work, they are 70% less likely to experience high burnout.

Huntington Health, based in Pasadena, California, has seen great improvements in its revenue cycle department since making strategic changes, including the implementation of Waystar, in 2021.

Prior to these strategic changes, Huntington Health struggled with cumbersome workflows, complaints from patients and low returns on payment collections. At the time, their customer service was outsourced, but five Huntington Health employees still spent a significant amount of time responding to patient complaints and triaging issues. Patients often commented that it was confusing to differentiate between the outsourced call center and the Huntington Health team.

“We had a lot of friction,” said Caroline Balfour, Huntington Health’s Vice President of Revenue Cycle.

With a vision for a unique customer-focused approach, Huntington Health empowered their leaders and their staff with new tools designed to change patient perceptions, reduce call volumes and improve the experience for their team and their patients. A key step in this process was implementing Waystar’s platform which includes patient financial experience.

Huntington Health implemented and trained staff on Waystar’s platform quickly. The platform enabled the team to educate and engage patients about payment options. When a patient schedules an appointment, an estimate is sent via email or text in advance. The platform includes an online portal that shows patients a breakdown of their potential charges and various payment options prior to the visit, as well as account balance and receipts immediately after payment. Patients can also ask questions via chat or phone.

Since deploying Waystar, Huntington Health has seen its net promoter score rise to 60, which is exceptional for any industry, but especially healthcare, and average patient satisfaction scores now range from 4.5 to 4.8 out of 5, a marked improvement.

Huntington Health was able to achieve these improvements without additional revenue cycle hires because this technology automates the labor-intensive responsibilities. Five employees still work in the department but can now focus their efforts on higher-value tasks including time with patients.

“It’s a small unit that we have to support this—the tool does the work,” Balfour said.

Huntington Health is also using the tool to segment patients by propensity to pay. This allows staff to proactively prioritize patients who are more likely to need additional support. This is possible through the tool’s automation that frees up time and resources so healthcare organizations can spend more time with the patient, guilt free.

Huntington Health’s financial performance has also benefited from the strategic changes Balfour’s team made. They’ve driven a 50% increase in collections, with $1.23 million in collections made in May 2022 compared to $821,000 in August 2021.

“It has been an unbelievable success for us,” Balfour said, referring to the ripple effect of positive momentum in staff efficiency, patient satisfaction, and financial performance.

While AI and RPA can greatly improve workflows and free-up staff to focus on high-value departmental needs, there are limitations to be aware of when considering implementing automation.

General-purpose automation moves data, focuses on low-value, high-volume tasks, but often isn’t well-equipped to handle the complexity of the healthcare revenue cycle. In fact, general-purpose automation can actually waste time and resources and unintentionally delay reimbursement.

On the other hand, purpose-built automation, embedded with healthcare expertise and sharpened with relevant data, will be a boon for healthcare organizations because it is designed to address the complexity of today’s healthcare revenue cycle. It’s also designed to understand exactly what needs to be accomplished in order to empower the organization’s success, along with governance and rules to ensure that it can operate smoothly.

For example, Waystar’s purpose-built automation can curate data, thereby eliminating manual work such as calling payers and logging onto payer websites for claim status updates. Purpose-built automation can use artificial intelligence to assign payer responses to built-in workflows. And because purpose-built automation leverages payer remittance data, payment forecasts are more accurate, and payment is captured faster.

It also reduces the need for manual work, which is vital as providers cope with strains on their workforce. In fact, recent research from the Health Management Academy found that automation freed up staff to focus on more complex revenue cycle tasks. Among the leading health systems who implemented automation in the revenue cycle, 62% said they reallocated staff to different roles, and 47% eliminated vacant positions.

With purpose-built automation, healthcare providers can achieve a simplified revenue cycle that can respond to current and future demands.

Many providers use disparate systems to try to solve their billing and payment needs, resulting in manual workflows for staff, information discrepancy, unknown errors, and preventable mistakes. These outdated technologies can lead to employee burnout, dissatisfaction, and turnover. Coupled with the nation’s labor shortage and providers’ existing resource constraints, this pervasive problem will continue to increase costs and impact revenue.

Modern demands on revenue cycle require a single payments platform. This allows healthcare organizations to optimize revenue cycle performance, streamline workflows, and ultimately improve both patient and staff satisfaction. The right automation takes healthcare organizations to new heights.

The Waystar payment’s platform enables providers to manage commercial, government and patient payments all in one place. Simplifying healthcare payments allows providers to focus on what matters most.

For more information about automating your revenue cycle, check out this on-demand webinar or visit Waystar.com.