Revenue Cycles and Hospital Management

Often times one might not associate revenue cycles with hospitals, because hospitals are many times understaffed and lacking resources, thus making revenue cycle management difficult.

But this is constantly changing and hospitals are becoming, and have become, more efficient.

Yes, hospitals are places where patients receive treatment - pretty clear definition. But, when it comes to managing hospitals, one thing always arises and is a key component to most, if not all, decisions made when operating hospitals.

With the new federal mandates, comes more and more EHR implementations, and coming from this is meaningful use and ICD-10 and their associated changes. Some see these changes as burdensome, but with the help of medical scribes, these new changes can actually lead to more streamlining and efficiency, and to better doctor patient interaction.

Despite some hospitals viewing EHRs and electronic charting in general as a hassle, some hospitals are actually profiting more from these changes. Revenue cycle management and financial metrics are important to hospital administrators, and though new changes may lead to new organization and management of health care, as seen in analysis, using EHRs and medical scribes can lead to growing profits. EHRs can clearly be productivity-boosting and especially so when viewing EHR through the lens of patient coordination.

For more info on this click here to see an article by EHR Intelligence.

Emergency Preparedness and Health IT Systems  

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been increasing its initiatives to help providers prepare their IT systems for emergencies. These initiatives are important because there is always a chance for natural or man-made disasters to strike. A National Coordinator, Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, Msc and Greg S. Margolis, PhD NREMT-P explain that HHS is making an effort to help providers prepare for potential disasters and to protect data and patients in the event of an emergency: “The question isn’t whether or not we will have another disaster - it is just a matter of when, where, and how severe it will be.”

Natural disasters can be devastating events, and hurricanes, earthquakes and other storms can cut off electricity and internet connection which can lead to crisis situations in hospitals. That is why it is key to follow HHS activity and initiatives to prepare for emergencies.

Examples of HHS efforts of preparation are detailed below:

• First project is a single website that aggregates real-time data from Twitter to identify trends related to public health and incidences of disaster.
• Second project is another website that is still being developed, and it will include an interactive map to highlight the number of Medicare beneficiaries reliant on electricity on a given zip code level. This map will tie directly to data from the NOAA to warn hospitals and other providers about storms approaching that may cut power at their locations. 

To see more information on HHS efforts to take on EHR and data disaster planning click here.

By definition provided by the U.S government Health IT website, an electronic medical record (EMR) is a digital version of a paper chart that contains all of a patient’s medical history from one practice. An EMR is mostly used by providers for diagnosis and treatment.

EMRs are more beneficial than paper records because EMRs lead to improved efficiency and organization of records. Digital management systems for tracking patient care and maintaining that patients are properly informed about their health via online records is key to keeping up in the digital age.

Using EMRs can be overwhelming to doctors who are more accustomed to paper charts. 

This is where the scribes come in! Medical scribes focus on completing all of the electronic record work while the physician focuses on the patient.

According to the American College of Emergency Physicians the following are the main duties of scribes:

• to follow a physician through his or her work day and chart patient encounters in real-time using a medical office's Electronic Health Record and existing templates

• generate referral letters for physicians, manage and sort medical documents within the EHR system, and assist with e-prescribing

  Thus, by handling data management tasks, scribes allow physicians to have more time with patients and to better manage their patient treatment time.