Case Analysis of Sutton Health Essay

This network identified that traditional payment processing system had limitations that hindered the effective collecting of revenue. What with the recession, healthcare organizations have seen an increase in the inability to collect debt from the self-pay, the uninsured and underinsured patients. This has caused a lot of struggle when it comes to the organizations to meet the operational margins and the profits. I find there are a number of reasons for the new increase in patient’s debts, the most common are, poor accounting practices, lack of patient information and correct demographics. There is new governance that is designed to provide more coordinated care to said patients (Gleeson,2010). There are five geographic regions that reflects the health care access to the customers of Northern California. Each of the five regions will have governance structure and it will oversee many of the Sutter affiliated medical facilities and also the hospitals. In its effort to increase point of service collections and improve the overall revenue cycle Sutter health took steps to measure performance using a handful of specific primary benchmarks, empowering PFS staff to assume responsibility for every individual account they handle, ensure each registration is analyzed using a rules engine to identify problems before patients leave the registration desk and ensure PFS staff receive appropriate co mprehensive training to excel under the new system† (Souza, McCarty, 2007). Obtaining the correct patient information plays a large part on non-collectable debt because patients are not able to be reached. These limitations were associated with limited access to accurate information by the account representatives, ineffective performance measures and fragmented centers of the service provision. The Sutter Health program developed a system that was comprised of solutions that were geared towards overcoming these limitations. The key problems and issues, is that the United States healthcare system is characterized by huge upkeep from collecting revenue from patients. This situation is brought about by a health care insurance system which entails high deductible pay health plans and as well as higher co-payments plan. (Souza, McCarty, 2007). This situation has been made worse through the large proportion of the population not having healthcare coverage. The traditional health care system has had a hard time meeting their target revenue collection. This is due to several problems that attached along with the traditional payment system. Unlike when dealing with the payments through insurance claims but also dealing with the up-front payments that are required by the hospital for payment of services before the patient could even receive the service (Souza, Mccarty, 2007). So this means that the patient services staff (PFS) has to have complete and accurate information about above said client. This presented a problem for the traditional payment system where much of the customer payment system was processed in the back end. This system also required that the PFS staff ask for money from self-pay patients, but the PFS were not accustomed to this under the traditional system. The PFS staff found it hard to wait for the back end section to process customer information and to provide a breakdown of the patients payment details. So this became a tedious task for hospital accounting departments as well as for patients that had to wait a longer period before receiving services. The inefficiency of the traditional system not only resulted in low quality services, but also in low revenue collections. The system provides such a broad range of health care services, which include acute, sub- acute, home health, long term, outpatient care as well as physician delivery systems. These services are provided through an integrated health care delivery approach that gives the system the ability to deliver a full range of healthcare products and services. rks. Sutter also recognized that the traditional system did not provide a means for analyzing selected data nor did it generate required detailed report on demand. This led to more cost as the hospital had to rely on programmers to generate such reports. The front desk staff also lacked real time information which hindered their ability to serve the client without consulting the back end staff. It also meant that the front desk staff could not monitor the patients progress (Souza, McCarty, 2007). Another challenge was that the PFS members were not empowered enough to be held accountable for each patients accounts they dealt with and it reduced the amount of accountability among the staff. These are some of the key challenges that the Sutter system were meant to address. The solutions that were employed by Sutter Health was an attempt to overcome the challenges stated above. Sutter Health implemented certain changes in the fore mentioned system that would make their operation more efficient. The strategies identified by the Sutter program entailed transferring most of the back end tasking to the front desk; providing accurate and complete information to managers and upfront staff; providing more effective performance evaluation and integrating all data elements within the system (Souza, McCarty, 2007). Allowing front desk staff to handle much of the payment process was deemed to have an effect on the efficiency of the process. Various solutions were employed to ensure that this is achieved. One of these solutions entailed using benchmarks to measure performance by the Patient Service Staff (PFS). Sutter identified a handful of primary benchmarks which included; Unbilled A/R days, Gross A/R days, Major A/R days, Cash Collection,percentage of A/R over 90, 180, 360 days (Souza, McCarty, 2007). This benchmark introduced shorter periods with which staff performances could be evaluated. This move was timely especially when onsidering that the industry has changed and things happen in terms of hours and days but not months. Another solution involved empowering the PFS members to have full responsibility over the accounts they are dealing with. This move was meant to increase a sense of responsibility and accountability as each individual members will be responsible for his or her own account (Souza, McCarty, 2007). This also gave the PFS members more autonomy to act as they saw fit and this improved the speed and efficient of service delivery by these staff members. The program also provided the PFS members with tools, that enabled them to automate their accounts, sort out their accounting using various means and seen their performances based on the achievement of the target. PFS and other accountant representatives were presented with individual dashboards that helped in the tracking of their progress in meeting targets. This also helped in enforcing the benchmarks set by this program. Sutter’s health program also introduced a front end collecting system as means of overcoming the mentioned problems. The pint of access collecting system introduced an opportunity for the health care facilities to reduce claims and denials. Though this system the patient records are analyzed before the patient leaves the registration desk. This enables the front desk staff to identify problems such as bad debt, patient or invalid patient type early enough and take the necessary corrective action. The Sutter health program also embarked on a comprehensive training program that was designed to support the existing PFS members and the registration staff. This gave staff the necessary competence to deal with the tools provided by this system. The training program also eliminated the need to hire formally educated staff to operate the system that would and more than the $10-$20 an hour paid to current registration and PFS staff. For example, registration staff who were not used to asking patients for money were trained in effective communication skills. The training was also designed to introduce autonomy and effectiveness which acted as a motivator to the employee.