Revenue Cycle Management: Meeting the Challenges.
We all know the challenges that come with managing your revenue cycle. From making sure accurate information is collected during patient registration until the claim is finally paid, countless processes must be done correctly to keep the process moving.
At SMG, we also know the challenges that come with picking a partner to help manage your revenue cycle. Most revenue cycle companies do their work remotely (in more ways than one). They’re not on site, and they don’t get to know your people, your processes or your patients. As a result, many of them just process your clean claims and send the rest back to you.
The SMG Difference:
Hands-on and In Person.
We Know Rural.
SMG traces its roots to a turnaround project of a Mississippi CAH, which it still manages to this day. When SMG took over, the facility measured its cash on hand in hours instead of days. Its business office was in complete disarray, with a small staff that had little or no training in revenue cycle best practices. As a result, SMG’s biggest and most immediate challenge was finding, hiring and training revenue cycle personnel in a small town in the Mississippi Delta.
As SMG has grown and become revenue cycle partners with other facilities, we’ve never forgotten that our rural clients often need help finding and training revenue cycle staff.
So instead of just remotely billing your clean claims, we emphasize hands-on training and building up your own revenue cycle staff.
Comprehensive On-site Staff Training.
With the rise of electronic health records and cloud-based billing software, more and more revenue cycle management services do their work remotely from a central business office. While that has its place, experience has taught us that a strong on-site presence—particularly in the early stages—is important for long-term success.
SMG personnel, from project managers to billers and coders, will come on-site to evaluate what staff you have, and what training they need. Then we’ll work with you to develop a comprehensive, in-person training program that will give you a staff ready to run an efficient revenue cycle management program based on industry best practices.
Best Practices are SMG Practices.
Not only will we train your staff in best practices, we’ll also review your processes and procedures to recommend changes that will make your revenue cycle more efficient and compliant. We’ll look at how your facility registers patients, how encounters are captured, how your EHR is set up, and the dozens of other processes that go into claims being presented and paid.
Once we’ve gathered this information, we’ll review your existing policies and processes, compare them to the industry’s best practices, and recommend changes to ensure that your revenue cycle timely presents accurate claims that are paid as quickly as possible.