By Jessica Cooley, Chief Marketing Officer, Access Healthcare
We’ve all seen them in the bookstore and on television. Titles like How to Stay Alive in the Woods and Campground Survival. "Survival guides” of many types have become popular viewing for the adventurous and the wannabe-adventurous. They offer advice on how to survive any catastrophe from a bear attack during a hike to a complete global apocalypse. Many survival guides make for perversely fascinating reading, preparing the reader for dangerous situations they will likely never encounter. Although thoroughly entertaining, I would not suggest survival guides for pleasure reading. Now especially isn’t the time to unwind reading about being the last person on a scorched Earth.
While I don’t have the knowledge to survive all animal attacks or natural disasters, I clearly see the metaphor between survival guides and the current global business climate. Just as in the wild or in the middle of natural disasters, those with foresight, skill, and fortitude have the highest chance of survival.
Foresight requires prudence, and revenue cycle management is THE model of business prudence. I believe offshore RCM will be the best tool for financial survival in the future world of healthcare. Our industry statistics have proven that outsourcing revenue cycles to a professional provider will improve the bottom line. When the RCM provider combines the best people, the right processes, and the latest technology, the client’s revenue cycle is streamlined and the organization has the freedom to pursue new opportunities and profit centers. For those who may not have previously considered outsourcing their RCM, there has never been a better time.
Consider the issue of cost containment during the current pandemic crisis. For organizations considering layoffs, overwhelmed with patient care and the corresponding claims to code and process, or simply understaffed due to health and working remotely factors, a trusted RCM partner can seamlessly deploy a team of experts to support critical revenue functions.
Most healthcare systems have no way to plan or forecast patient volumes at the moment. Elective procedures are being postponed in many regions, while the volume of telehealth and from-home healthcare has soared. Other areas are experiencing a spike in COVID-19 patients, filling their beds to capacity. Outsourcing provides the ability to scale up or down as volumes fluctuate, thus reducing labor and overhead costs. Streamlining often equates to success in the long-term, and not simply by cutting costs. A strong RCM partner will assist with improving performance and accuracy, and support your organization’s growth by identifying issues and applying best practices. An exceptional RCM partner allows organizations the freedom to return to patient care with the assurance that the revenue stream continues.
Access Healthcare’s own Survivor’s Guide encompasses our offshoring business model. Our mission to create a better methodology through applied automation enhances our ability to contain costs, deploy expertise, increase the speed of processing and streamline for long-term success. Our technological expertise and proprietary software innovations have proven to be key strategies to our growth. Access Healthcare’s early commitment to offshoring began with a best practices process.
After establishing innovative technology and automation, we then engaged the right human expertise to drive sustainable and high-quality results. Our methodology has allowed us to recruit a better team of people by emphasizing their career development. By tapping into a skilled workforce and investing in their training, education, and the opportunity for a solid career trajectory, we are rewarded with a dedicated team of employees.
The offshore model has proven to be highly successful, as Access Healthcare experienced during the execution of our 4-stage emergency plan at the onset of COVID-19 nationwide mandated restrictions. Thanks to foresight, technology, and automation, we were able to mobilize 12,000 employees in 17 delivery centers across India and the Philippines in less than 48 hours. Employees were transitioned to work-from-home arrangements or alternate locations quickly and efficiently. We deployed a “virtual office” hierarchical management strategy that encompassed mitigating asset security, legal concerns, HIPAA constraints, mobility of computers, and availability of internet service in remote areas. Our investment in developing proprietary technology solutions allowed us to operate at normal production capacity and to keep revenue flowing for our clients. We met the “catastrophe” head-on, and I’m pleased to report we survived, even flourished. More importantly, we were able to keep our customers’ RCM operating efficiently. By applying our prescriptive and scalable security controls, we dispelled HIPAA and data breach concerns. This real-time exercise demonstrated our ability to move seamlessly with minimal loss in productivity.
Without a crystal ball, none of us knows what tomorrow’s catastrophe or worst-case scenario will bring; however, Access Healthcare will continue to develop and revise our Survivor’s Guide for future threats that we can provide what our clients need. It’s a jungle out there, and we need to be prepared!
Author
Jessica Cooley, Chief Marketing Officer
Jessica is responsible for integrating marketing initiatives to support and enable customer-facing sales efforts to drive the company’s growth, build the global brand, and create customer awareness and experience. Jessica oversees global marketing, sales, and communications including industry insights, branding and promotions, sales enablement, thought leadership, and public relations.