Accounting & Financial Management
"A big contributing factor to this success was the creation of auto-text templates for common procedures, all pre-verified by coders to meet billing requirements," said the health system's CMIO.
Patient volumes, adjusted admissions and federal funding contribute to the outlook, although outside factors could change this.
Health spending increased at a slightly faster rate than gross domestic product, but the report analyzed figures prior to the pandemic.
Expenses continue to rise as hospitals replenish staff to meet rising coronavirus cases and incur the costs of drugs and PPE.
The system's digital transformation achieved Stage 7 designation from the HIMSS Analytics Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity.
When health systems have their staff manage revenue cycles, up to 25% of the day can be spent on repetitive tasks related to the revenue process.
Non-COVID-19 utilization is back to 95% of baseline, and, when coupled with the cost of COVID-19 care, overall utilization is above baseline.
If all U.S. counties had high health-literacy levels, there would be $25.4 billion in Medicare savings annually.
The drop in admissions suggests revenue losses that may be difficult for some hospitals to weather.
A complete financial recovery for many organizations is still far away, findings from Kaufman Hall indicate.