Electronic Health Reporter

By Shawn Yates, director of product management, Ontario Systems.

Impossible projects, crazy deadlines and short staffing present a bigger challenge than their own resolution: They draw focus away from important revenue cycle functions that maintain positive margins. Caring for the patient is, of course, the healthcare provider’s core mission. Healthcare’s financial operations help to achieve that mission.

Those involved in the revenue cycle process grasp the value efficiency and agent productivity can bring to an organization.

Reduced cost, greater performance, and the capacity to work through more patient accounts are the direct benefit, and those goals tie directly to financial performance and the core mission of outstanding patient care. Workflow, data analytics, reporting and performance dashboards are just a few of the tools you use to get to that point.

When working with new technology, having a resource to leverage from an outsourcing perspective can be very beneficial. Providers who outsource do so because they know their health system functions more efficiently when they can focus on what they do best.

What are the specific reasons that make outsourcing a particularly attractive investment right now? Three factors contribute:

1. It’s difficult to stay up-to-date on today’s technology. Whether it’s a smart phone, a smart appliance, or a smart digital assistant like Alexa, new features critical to your process come and go at a rapid pace. Leveraging technology outsourcing resources helps healthcare providers digest this information easier and implement solutions faster.
2. Siloed information means common, effective practices are shared less freely. Mergers, acquisitions, and other forms of consolidation make it difficult to reconcile the most effective practices that different parts of a health system use. A good managed services team focused on your technology can bring all that information together, which means more harmonious operation not only within your team, but in concert with others.
3. Increasing productivity is the key to financial success. Fully-leveraging new technology can be the key to managing talent, setting goals, and ultimately improving productivity, while using expert resources in a technology outsourcing capacity can help you bring in new features quicker. Together, these practices lead to faster returns on investment as providers today are faced with reduced reimbursements.

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