St. Elizabeth Medical Center plans to implement new revenue management software to help manage high volume, low dollar claims, improve laboratory collection rates, and increase reporting capabilities.
The Covington, Ky-based hospital will install McKesson's Revenue Management Solution. St. Elizabeth hopes to use the new technology to reduce outreach lab accounts receivable days. A McKesson team will also work on denied claims to help reduce the medical center's write-offs and bad debt.
"McKesson has a team dedicated to outreach lab billing, so it has the systems and people in place to be effective," said Joseph Ruark, assistant vice president of patient financial services at St. Elizabeth.
Many hospitals cannot devote staff time to internal outreach billing operations, leaving low-reimbursement outreach lab revenue uncollected. St. Elizabeth has instead decided to focus staff time on inpatient and outpatient billing services, and turn to an outside vendor for revenue management expertise.
Of particular to interest to the hospital was the new software's reporting package, which Ruark said provides in-depth management reports to help outreach labs better understand their data.
"The reports offer significantly more information than we were previously providing to the lab from the hospital billing system," said Ruark.
Through the partnership, Ruark hopes to extend lab services to new physicians in the community, thereby gaining additional revenue from clinical lab technologies already in place.