More than 60 percent of providers report that they struggle to derive optimal value from their electronic health records (EHRs), and 85 percent believe the increase in consumer self-pay will continue to impact their organizations, according to an analysis from consulting firm Navigant that was based on a recent survey from the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA).
According to the survey of 108 hospital and health system chief financial officers and revenue cycle executives, 62 percent suggest EHR adoption challenges have been equal to or outweighed benefits specific to their organization’s revenue cycle performance, up from 56 percent in the 2018 edition of the survey. In addition, more than half of executives say their organizations can’t keep up with EHR upgrades or underuse available EHR functions.
Consumer self-pay concerns also persist for provider executives; 85 percent of respondents—including all large hospital executives—believe the increase in consumer responsibility for healthcare costs will continue to affect their organizations, up from 81 percent last year but down from 92 percent in 2017.
In an ongoing effort to better manage these challenges, 69 percent of executives predict their organization’s IT budgets will increase over the next year, up from 68 percent last year but below 74 percent in 2017.
When asked which strategies they’ve already implemented to successfully decrease revenue cycle costs and increase economies of scale, 46 percent of executives selected collaboration with external entities, including outsourcing and vendor partnerships. In addition, one-in-four of both health system and large provider executives cited advanced health IT, including robotic process automation (RPA).
“It was anticipated that EHRs would be the main driver of broad performance improvement, but that has not occurred in many cases,” Timothy Kinney, managing director at Navigant, said in a statement. “Instead, providers are now taking other steps, including looking outside their organizations to collaborate with external entities and leveraging advanced technology solutions, and they’re seeing successes.”
Executives also suggest their organizations have implemented solutions to better engage consumers on healthcare costs, offering comprehensive financial counseling and payment plans (40 percent) and online portals for price estimates and payment (32 percent).
What’s more, integrating revenue cycle operations with clinical operations is an area where providers aren’t seeing enough success; just 3 percent of respondents feel their organizations have been entirely successful at doing so.
Moving forward, the majority of executives (87 percent) again suggest they’re most focused on technology-related capabilities to drive future revenue cycle improvements. Revenue integrity was the top area of focus for the third straight year, cited by 28 percent of executives, a 21 percent increase from 2017. Furthermore, RPA saw a major jump among health system executives—15 percent cited the capability, which wasn’t selected by any health system executive in 2018.
“New technologies leveraging RPA, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have unlocked significant opportunities to reach previously unattainable levels of revenue cycle performance,” said Navigant Director Kent Ritter. “As we’ve learned with EHR implementations, there are no silver bullets. These tools are not ‘plug and play,’ and the ability to integrate operational and technical expertise remains key to provider success.”
