ssalmich
- Feb 23
- 3 min read

New Year’s RCM Resolutions

Posted on Friday, January 15, 2021

While many people are eager to start a new year and put 2020 behind them, COVID-19 continues to impact healthcare facilities in numerous ways – including financially.

A recent survey of hospital executives and finance leaders found that since the pandemic started, there has been an increase in bad debt, uncompensated care, self-pay patients, and Medicaid patients for over 40 percent of participants.

In response to these challenges, we’ve listed practical actions you can take this year to protect your revenue and reduce uncompensated care.

Here are five New Year’s RCM resolutions:

Resolution #1: Financially Clear Patients Prior to Their Date of Service

Preventing errors on the front end of the revenue cycle is an ideal way to avoid payment delays, denials, underpayments, and extended A/R that contribute to bad debt.

EligibilityAdvocates’ pre-arrival workflow solution streamlines financial clearance activities such as order/referral management, (real-time) insurance verification, preauthorization, and (real-time) medical necessity verification. Automating steps performed by Patient Access limits deficiencies and integrity issues that have a negative impact on the revenue cycle.

Resolution #2: Ensure Your Organization Is Payer of Last Resort

To reduce bad debt, it is imperative that all possible funding sources are exhausted for a patient account before it is designated as uncompensated care. There are numerous options available, including:

Medicaid
Out-of-State Medicaid
Presumptive Eligibility
Crime Victim Compensation
Disability – SSI/SSDI
Qualified Health Plan Enrollment
State & County Programs
COBRA
Veterans Benefits
Indian Health Services

EligibilityAdvocates screens patients for their eligibility in all the above using our proprietary software, AdvocatorAI.

The screening process can begin immediately, as our patient advocates are equipped with tablets and can meet with the patient at bedside or in the field and deliver instant results.

Additionally, our pre-arrival workflow solution searches for unreported health coverage and our patient advocates help patients enroll in health plans so that they are covered for future visits at your facility.

An added benefit of our technology solutions is that they facilitate a “touchless” process with patients. We can conduct the screening process with AdvocatorAI over the phone and complete financial clearance prior to patient arrival, which helps limit the number of people at your facility during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Resolution #3: Stop Writing Off Out-of-State Medicaid Claims

Out-of-state Medicaid billing is complex, but hospitals that write off these claims miss out on a substantial form of reimbursement.

If you are unable to devote the necessary time and resources to working these complicated accounts, outsource out-of-state Medicaid claims to a team of experts who can do the work for you.

EligibilityAdvocates handles all aspects of out-of-state Medicaid enrollment (for both facility and providers), billing, and follow-up. We have experience in all 50 states’ programs and our early determination and single point allocation allow for more Medicaid conversions, higher remittance, and faster reimbursement.

Resolution #4: Improve Patient Engagement & Patient Responsibility Collections

EligibilityAdvocates provides one-on-one patient financial counseling and education to help patients navigate their healthcare finances. And our in-person meetings between patients and patient advocates result in higher conversion rates, increased point-of-service payments, and the establishment of patient payment plans.

The more your patients understand the financial aspects of healthcare (such as health insurance, financial assistance opportunities, and how to decipher their medical bills), the more likely they are to pay their patient responsibility. Patient financial stress is often related to confusion over what is owed and why, which leads to delayed or non-payments.

Resolution #5: Outsource Patient Eligibility & Enrollment

You will experience a greater return on investment if you pursue these objectives with the help of an outsourced and on-site patient eligibility and enrollment service.

Managing these tasks internally requires the expenses of an in-house staff (e.g. pay, benefits, hiring, initial and ongoing training, office space, phones, computers, printers, desks). These are costs that must be paid whether employees recover an adequate percentage of revenue or not.

On the other hand, if you outsource patient eligibility to EligibilityAdvocates, we offer performance-based pricing; you only pay us a percentage of the money we collect and none of the labor costs. We also provide OP/ED staffing at up to 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, which contributes to our higher success rates.

Keep Your New Year’s RCM Resolutions with EligibilityAdvocates

When you partner with EligibilityAdvocates, we will make sure you reach each of these goals and more.

By Stephanie Salmich

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