The Business of Surgery

How To Create A Digital Audit Trail For Your Tissue

Tissue and related specimens present a unique tracking challenge for hospitals and surgery centers – these often expensive and occasionally one-of-a-kind items are required to be closely monitored during the hospital’s handling of each unit. The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), state Departments of Health and hospital accreditation bodies, such as The Joint Commission […]

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3 Cost Containment Ideas For Hospitals Heading Into a Challenging Environment In 2018

As we head into 2018, there appears to be a lot of headwinds facing hospitals and healthcare systems: regulatory uncertainty around the Affordable Care Act, slowing patient admissions, accelerating costs and shrinking margins. Moody’s Investor Services predicts bad debt to grow 6-7% in 2018 and operating cash flow for non-profit hospitals to shrink 2-4%. In

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The Benefits Of Proactive vs. Reactive Clinical Documentation Improvement

Many hospital financial executives view clinical documentation improvement (CDI) efforts to improve capture revenue as a purely financial gain for their hospital. This is a perfectly valid reason for pursuing CDI initiatives, as all major investments should have a financial return to the hospital. However, re-examining CDI efforts and changing from a proactive to reactive

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Using Clean Data To Get More Out Of Your EMR Investment

Hospitals and healthcare systems across the US have spent billions of dollars per year over the last decade implementing electronic medical record (EMR) systems across their operations. A lot of the promise of EMR systems for hospitals is the data that they can collect that can be used for a wide range of analyses: cost

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Using Analytics to Improve Quality and Lower Costs

As healthcare providers continue to pursue the triple aim, leading hospitals are turning to data analytics to identify major areas for improvement in daily operations. All three of the triple aim objectives – patient experience, population health and cost – can be attacked in various ways by analyzing high fidelity data for trends and patterns.

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How To Close A $25 Million Budget Gap In 10 Days

With the constant shift in the payor environment, and the continuing consolidation of the hospital market, many healthcare providers are having to search for new ways to cut costs and increase revenues just to stay profitable. There are so many places that hospitals can unlock additional dollars, but where should they start? The management team

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Increasing Procedural Revenue

For the past several decades in healthcare, inventory has been managed independently from the rest of the business of providing healthcare. When you step back and look at how supplies impact the business of providing healthcare, you’ll see that hospitals can benefit greatly from extending the visibility of supplies to clinical documentation and billing. Charges

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Medicare To Consider Tracking Unique IDs For Medical Implants

As discussed in a recent article, recalled medical devices continue to be a patient safety and financial concern for hospitals and insurers. A recent study by Medicare estimated that over a 10 year span, they spent over $1.5 billion on surgeries and follow-up for over 73,000 patients implanted with one of seven defective heart devices. 

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Improving Clinical Documentation By Engaging Physicians

Hospitals continue to focus on clinical documentation improvement (CDI) efforts to capture revenue that they may be missing today.  With the healthcare payment market continually in flux, not a dollar can slip through the cracks with the narrow margins that most hospitals are operating at. Having a robust CDI program is one way hospitals are

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Midcycle Revenue Loss May Be Costing The Average Hospital $11 Million Annually

A recent study by the Advisory Board Company found that the average 250-bed hospital in the US lost between $4.7 and $11.3 million in 2016 from revenue loss in the midcycle. Advisory Board defines the midcycle as the revenue cycle functions that happen between patient enrollment and the back office – namely documentation, clinical documentation

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