Why Your Revenue Cycle Needs Consulting

As staffing shortages and unprecedented challenges come to a head, why should revenue cycle consulting be at the top of your list? Losing focus on this crucial process can result in delayed payments and diminishing capacity to offer exceptional patient care. Meanwhile, if you take the time to prioritize the revenue cycle, you might be able to free up resources and get ahead of staffing challenges. 

Why Is Revenue Cycle Consulting Important?

Without proper management of your revenue cycle, your practice will only fall farther behind. Clinics are facing more challenges than ever before — including reduced reimbursement rates and increasing expenses. All while trying to meet demands for telehealth and high-tech patient experiences.

It's a lot to handle and, when you throw staffing shortages into the mix, it could be enough to close your doors for good, but revenue cycle consulting could save you from taking any significant hit. You're well aware that the revenue cycle is what keeps your practice going. It entails claims reimbursements, patient billing, and all the duties that generate revenue for your practice. It can also be incredibly resource-intensive.

If you're one of the many practices that decided to introduce telehealth or remote patient monitoring services over the past couple of years, you likely found that the revenue cycle became even more labor-intensive as your staff learned how to code for these new services. You may have even seen an uptick in claim denials, resulting in extensive payment delays. 

Most providers recognize that overly complex revenue cycle processes take staff away from other crucial duties. Yet, it's a fundamental part of operating your practice — and that's precisely why now is the time for revenue cycle consulting. As you realign your priorities, freeing up staff and reducing costs should be top-of-mind concerns, and revenue cycle consulting is one of the fastest ways to get there. 

Overcoming Staffing Shortages

Greater demand for healthcare professionals has led to major staffing shortages, but rising costs have worsened the issue from a financial perspective. With less staff, your team is less efficient at handling claims and billing. The resulting missed and late payments reduce revenue for your practice, further impeding your ability to bring in much-needed resources. 

Meanwhile, the staff you already have is bogged down in scheduling, billing, insurance verification, authorizations, claims processing, and other time-intensive duties that eat away at your ability to provide great patient care. Through revenue cycle consulting, you can find ways to free up existing resources to make way for strategic expansion. 

By outsourcing revenue cycle management, your practice could see reduced costs while having your back-office staff more available for crucial activities. In fact, by shipping non-clinical duties to a trusted partner, providers have seen improved patient care and better performance while opening the doors to innovation.  

Innovating Patient Care

Revenue cycle consulting focuses on the billing side of your practice, but it also empowers scalable revenue generation. The right partner will help position your practice for innovation by freeing up staff, reducing costs, and offering crucial guidance as you pursue new patient services.

Following the pandemic, a number of providers began implementing tech-centric services for the first time. Today, telehealth is rapidly becoming an expectation as patients seek virtual appointments to discuss minor ailments and prescription renewals. The result is an improved patient experience as they enjoy the convenience of flexible scheduling while your practice can increase its daily capacity.

Additionally, you might pursue remote patient monitoring and other transformations that have proven in-demand and effective. Through revenue cycle consulting, you can find the labor and financial resources necessary to support these new endeavors while unlocking the input of trusted professionals. 

Positioning for Growth

The aim of revenue cycle consulting is to help you provide more cost-effective care by minimizing operational costs and helping you focus on the right services. While outsourcing RCM and other duties may currently be optional for your practice, experts predict that it will soon be essential.

As Doral Jacobsen, MBA, FACMPE, MGMA consultant, stated: "Looking forward into 2021 and beyond ... Clinicians depend on payer partners to come to the table and work collaboratively to care for our communities."

The financial side of your practice will only grow more complex in the years to come and require even more staff focus. Meanwhile, you're going to have increasing expenses to juggle while trying to get ahead of low reimbursement rates. Ultimately, pursuing revenue cycle consulting now could make the difference between a year of strategic expansion and a year of treading water.  

How TempDev Can Help With Revenue Cycle Consulting

As your practice looks to regain traction and set itself up for sustainable growth, revenue cycle consulting should be considered a must-do. Whether or not you choose to outsource revenue cycle management or other expensive activities, the consulting process will shed light on key areas that require your focus now, along with potential challenges you will want to prepare for in the near future.

At TempDev, we work with healthcare organizations every day to help them solve the problems they can't overcome on their own. Are you ready to learn more about how revenue cycle consulting can set your practice up for success? Contact us here or call us at 888.TEMP.DEV to schedule a consultation with TempDev today.