Three hospitals and one health system were selected from hundreds of hospitals nationwide to receive the 2014 Revenue Cycle Solutions Awards. Given by The Advisory Board Company, the awards recognize institutions’ leadership in initiatives to improve financial sustainability and achieve significant financial performance improvements. These hospitals achieved impressive improvements, including $8.2 million in additional revenue, improved compliance, reduced bad debt, and an increase of $6.1 million in point-of-service collections.

The awards honored the following work:

  • Baptist Beaumont Hospital, a 325-bed hospital in Beaumont, Tex, and a member of Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, had achieved only limited physician support for the hospital’s Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) program before engaging The Advisory Board Company; the limited support constrained the program’s effectiveness. Through a focused initiative, the hospital pinpointed the biggest opportunities to improve coding and documentation performance and conducted individualized education with the underperforming physicians. They also redesigned core CDI processes to increase efficiency and strengthen staff interactions with physicians. As a result of improved coding accuracy, the hospital was able to receive incremental payments totaling $8.2 million for delivered services in the first 12 months.
  • Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, a 628-bed hospital in Jackson, Miss, and a division of Baptist Health Systems, saw in its preparation for the rollout of the new ICD-10 coding system that the hospital also had an opportunity to improve clinical documentation under the current ICD-9 coding system. The health system structured CDI training that covered both ICD-9 and ICD-10 at the same time; doing so, they were able to drive compliance and save significant staff time.
  • IU Health Goshen Hospital, a 122-bed hospital in Goshen, Ind, was facing a rise in uninsured admissions and patient out-of-pocket obligations. The hospital provided patients greater transparency into patient obligation at the onset of care, in part by implementing a presumptive charity policy, which reviewed every patient household for charity eligibility. The solution reduced bad debt, increased community benefit, and improved the efficiency of the patient billing process.
  • Springhill Medical Center, a 252-bed hospital in Mobile, Ala, had a large number of patients discharged without their final bill (DNFB) because the hospital struggled with evaluating patient payment responsibility to calculate accurate bill estimates. The facility launched an initiative across many departments to improve financial performance and link all of the revenue cycle components to one database so frontline staff can see patient responsibility, payment history, and charity eligibility at the onset of care. Springhill also enabled online bill payment to increase the efficiency of accounts receivable. Through these initiatives, Springhill increased point-of-service collection by a cumulative $6.1 million over the past 4 years and decreased DNFB from a high of 9.3% to an average of 5.73%.

The four institutions are among more than 700 hospitals nationwide that are members of The Advisory Board Company’s Revenue Cycle Solutions programs—customized solutions that combine research, consulting, training, and technologies that drive revenue cycle performance. The award, in its second year, was given at the Revenue Cycle Summit in Washington, DC.

“As hospitals and health systems increasingly face margin pressures from accountable payment contracts and price-sensitive markets, the value of a high-performance revenue cycle has become even more critical,” says Zac Stillerman, general manager, Revenue Cycle Solutions at The Advisory Board Company, in a release. “The Revenue Cycle Solutions Awards winners have risen to national leadership in improving financial sustainability through analytics-driven approaches that prioritize staff engagement and education.”

Detailed case studies are available at www.advisory.com/RevCycleAwards.