Improve your hospital’s claims management

Hospital CFOs agree that there is always room for improvement in the areas of claims denials and underpayments. But often times a “quick fix” doesn’t lead to improvements, says senior editor Karen Munich-Pourshadi.

In this column, Karen suggests financial leaders work with their teams to identify, clarify, and quantify denials and underpayments in order to improve claims management.

How can hospitals improve their revenue stream? Karen spoke to Judith B. Suska, MBA, FHFMA, director at IMA Consulting, to discuss the key components to getting your denials in order.

Karen provides four tips for hospital CFOs. The first one: Build a denial recovery unit. “Members of the task force should include a representative from any function that deals with revenue cycle such as patient access, health information management, case management, finance and there also needs to be clinical representation,” she writes.