Financial leaders across the revenue cycle face mounting concerns around higher levels of denials, greater bad debt on balance sheets, and delayed payments from payers and patients. Here are five articles that we read this week that focus on the challenges hospitals are facing, and how they are tackling reduced reimbursement and working to capture additional revenue.
With pandemic-era allowances being phased out, hospitals are already starting to experience cuts to already strained budgets, particularly in revenue cycle departments, in this article from Fierce Healthcare.
HealthLeaders Media wrote a terrific piece recently about the increasing addition of revenue integrity professionals in health systems.
From a recent HFMA survey, nearly 60% of hospital surveyed plan to participate in Medicare Advantage risk sharing programs this year, and more than half participate in commercial risk or capitation agreements. Interestingly, nearly half of the system leaders in the survey also report uncertainty about meeting budgets.
Despite CMS increasing payments by ‘the highest’ rate in more than 25 years, the American Hospital Association has come out with a statement that the increase, while welcome, is not enough to offset increasing expenses. A helpful summary from Healthcare Finance News.
Finally, an article from Revenue Cycle Intelligence focused on research on out-of-pocket healthcare spending leading into the pandemic, showing the considerable rise in expenses for consumers over the past decade.