The old adage, “time is money,” has never rang truer than it does right now. With a shrinking workforce and increasing patient load, healthcare organizations are pressed now more than ever to make the most out of each day. Of course, their ultimate mission is to serve their patients. But it would be naive to ignore the role of money in healthcare. The truth is: healthcare is a business. And like all businesses, healthcare organizations need a stable and reliable revenue cycle to ensure the health of their organization, and ultimately, the health of their patients.

Accelerating reimbursement times should be simple, although it’s anything but. Let’s look at a few obstacles organizations face.

1. Claims can be denied for many, many reasons. Billing the wrong payer or patient, failure to complete medical necessity checks, inability to keep up with constantly changing regulations and inconsistent coding are just a few reasons that can lead to a claim denial. Denied claims require substantial rework on the backend to correct, extending the time it takes to receive payment. And in the worst-case scenario, an organization is never reimbursed at all.

2. The revenue cycle is full of tedious and repetitive tasks that slow down staff members. Tasks such as manual claims corrections reduce the number of claims an organization can make in a day and can take focus away from more complex issues.

3. Complications from EHR downtime—whether it was planned or not. Downtime can happen for a multitude of reasons such as scheduled maintenance, unexpected errors or even ransomware attacks. When an organization’s EHR goes offline, providers are forced to switch to paper charting. All the data recorded during that time will need to be re-recorded into the EHR as soon as it’s available again. This is extremely time-consuming and leaves room for human error as staff transcribe handwritten notes.

The causes of these complications may be out of the control of healthcare organizations, but the strategies and solutions they use to overcome them aren’t. And the best thing an organization can do is align itself with a healthcare IT partner that fully understands these challenges and can offer proper support to the next level in its revenue cycle. At Altera, we’ve put together a guide full of strategies to address these issues and more. Together, we can help your organization achieve financial stability and pave the way to the summit of success within healthcare. To download the guide, click here.