National Honors Awarded to Health Care Organizations That Improved Revenue Cycle Performance by $10.3M

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- One hospital and two health systems that documented $10.3 million in aggregate financial performance improvements were selected from hundreds of hospitals nationwide to receive the 2013 Revenue Cycle Solutions Awards presented today by The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ: ABCO).

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The Awards honored the following work:

• Houston Methodist, a five-hospital, 1,633-bed system in Houston, Texas, was facing increasing eligibility denials – refusal of reimbursement based on a patient's insurance coverage. The health system identified that discrete front- and back-end data posed a barrier to educating teams and implementing effective processes to improve performance. As a result, the health system pursued a data integration effort and a training program that improved front-end insurance coverage verification and ultimately decreased Houston Methodist's potential for denied payments by $7.2 million for a 10-month period.
• Kalispell Regional Medical Center (KRMC), a 163-bed hospital in Kalispell, Montana, observed that "self-pay" patients, who cover all of their own costs, were taking longer to pay bills. To inflect this metric, KRMC redesigned its billing, deploying analytics to help patients to better understand what they owed and training staff to help explain the obligations. With these initiatives, KRMC collected more than $1.2 million in eight months with no increase in writeoffs as a percent of total revenues.
• Methodist Health System (MHS), a three-hospital, 787-bed system in Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, focused on patient access and point-of-service collections, including standardizing scheduling, improving precertification management, and automating medical necessity checking, and increasing collections at the point of service by $1.87 million.

The three institutions are among more than 600 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 next-generation revenue cycle performance.  The Award, given at the Revenue Cycle Summit, recognizes institutions' leadership in initiatives to improve financial sustainability. 

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

"Health care reform and the movement toward accountable care have raised the already high premium on best-in-class revenue cycle performance.  On behalf of Revenue Cycle Solutions, I am excited to honor these organizations that have developed leading programs in patient access, the mid-cycle and business office operations," said Zac Stillerman, General Manager, Revenue Cycle Solutions at The Advisory Board Company.

For more information on revenue cycle best practices, please download The Advisory Board Company's infographic, 2013 Revenue Cycle Playbook: 20 Imperatives for Breakthrough Performance.

About Houston Methodist
Since its founding in 1919, Houston Methodist has earned worldwide recognition.  Houston Methodist is affiliated with the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, one of the nation's leading centers for medical education and research.  Houston Methodist is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Hospital" list and was recently named the No. 1 hospital in Texas.  Fortune magazine has placed Houston Methodist on its annual list of "100 Best Companies To Work For" since 2006.  Houston Methodist directs millions of research dollars into patient care and offers the latest innovations in medical, surgical and diagnostic techniques.  With 1,119 licensed beds, 73 operating rooms and over 15,000 employees, Houston Methodist offers complete care for patients from around the world.  For more information, visit www.houstonmethodist.org.

About Kalispell Regional Medical Center
Kalispell Regional Medical Center (KRMC) is a 163-bed hospital located in Kalispell, Montana.  KRMC serves more than 170,000 within a geographical region of 20,000 square miles and employs more than 2,600 team members.  KRMC is associated with the Kalispell Regional Healthcare System that has two acute-care hospitals (Kalispell Regional Medical Center and The HealthCenter), a skilled nursing facility (Brendan House), a fitness facility (The Summit Medical Fitness Center), a mental health and substance abuse facility (Pathways Treatment Center), a durable medical equipment company (Kalispell Medical Equipment) and more than 20 primary and specialty physician clinics.  Core services include cancer, cardiovascular, neuroscience and spine, emergency services, neonatal intensive care, and orthopedics.  With the philanthropic support of the KRH Foundation, the system has maintained the nation's first rural air ambulance service (A.L.E.R.T.) for more than 35 years and continues to add services and equipment to meet the growing health care needs of the region.  For more information, visit www.kalispellregional.org.

About Methodist Health System
Methodist Health System (Omaha, Neb.) is a leading regional integrated health care delivery system that brings together major health care organizations from across the region to provide quality health care and preventive services to residents throughout the Midwest.  Founded in 1982 as the first health care system formed in the region, the Methodist Health System mission is simple:  "MHS is committed to caring for people."  The health system strives to ensure that its programs and services, and those of its affiliate corporations, are of superior value and readily available to all residents of the regions it serves.  It provides services to each affiliate in the areas of accounting, finance, billing, collections, management engineering, planning, marketing, human resources, information technology and network development.  Methodist Health System is made up of Nebraska Methodist Hospital Foundation, Nebraska Methodist Hospital, Methodist Women's Hospital, Jennie Edmundson Hospital, Methodist Physicians Clinic, Nebraska Methodist College-The Josie Harper Campus and Shared Service Systems.  For more information, visit www.bestcare.org.

About The Advisory Board Company
The Advisory Board Company is a global research, technology, and consulting firm partnering with 165,000 leaders in 4,100 organizations across health care and higher education. Through its innovative membership model, the Company collaborates with executives and their teams to elevate performance and solve their most pressing challenges. The Company provides strategic guidance, actionable insights, web-based software solutions, and comprehensive implementation and management services. For more information, visit the firm's website, www.advisory.com.

SOURCE The Advisory Board Company