Pandemic likely catalyst for future deals and partnerships
The financial and operational fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic was felt deeply by the nation's hospitals and health systems, evident by diminished patient volumes, and heightened labor and supply expenses.
Despite that, the year's hospital mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity remained at a similar level as years past, but analysts and health leaders alike expect the pandemic to be a catalyst for future deals and partnerships.
"It appears that COVID-19 has actually confirmed the strategic rationale underlying many transactions that were already underway, and may be acting as a catalyst for innovative strategic partnerships and tactical transactions," according to Kaufman Hall's 2020 M&A in Review report. "The pandemic has accelerated the need for strategic initiatives that address the opportunities of industry transformation and that reward well-thought-out alignment opportunities."
The analysts aren't the only ones who believe healthcare M&A activity will continue to grow this year—44% of healthcare CFOs say the pandemic will drive an increase in partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, according to the 2021 BDO Healthcare CFO Outlook Survey.
In 2021, 31% of CFOs plan to acquire physician practices, 30% want to join a clinically integrated network, 28% expect to merge with another organization, 24% plan to enter into a joint venture, 20% may need to sell to another organization and 17% expect to acquire another organization.
Your bottom line has never been more important
Moving forward, organizations with strong balance sheets will be in a position to take advantage of other system's divestitures to grow their capabilities and expand into new markets, according to Kaufman Hall.
The report anticipates that well-positioned health systems will also seek out partnerships with other healthcare verticals such as skilled nursing, home health, behavioral health, laboratories and post-acute care.
Strengthening your bottom line
Hospitals and health systems are constantly challenged to maintain a strong revenue cycle amid fluctuating industry dynamics—which have been further exacerbated by the current global pandemic. Leaders must remain vigilant, looking for ways to speed cash flow, reduce the cost-to-collect, maintain regulatory compliance and respond to new and emerging payment models. The increasing use of technology, along with rising consumerism and shrinking margins, are also factors organizations must deal with as they aim to improve and sustain performance.
Automating manual revenue cycle processes should no longer be a “nice-to-have” or future priority. The right revenue cycle management platform will help you increase revenue by first identifying points of friction and then resolving them. Automating your coding and billing processes will help you achieve accuracy—by reducing human error and careless keying mistakes—and maximize the shrinking healthcare dollar.
Quadax’s revenue cycle management solutions help hospitals and health systems simplify medical billing, increase revenue and decrease bad debt. Our solutions manage the entire revenue cycle using effective data and analytics, and by conducting a thorough and continuous analysis of front-end to back-end revenue processes to help deliver the best possible patient care without compromising reimbursement goals.
Effective data and analytics monitor, analyze, and report on organizational performance to identify and quickly act upon opportunities for improvement. Here are just a few of the benefits our clients have realized using our platform:
- 99.6% first pass, clean claim rate.
- 78% reduction in Medicare registration and eligibility denials.
- Auto-creation of required appeal letters.
- Ability to automatically create custom edits, convert claim data, auto-correct or suppress clearinghouse edits without custom coding and additional costs.
- The ability to perform a root cause analysis through operational analytics to find where mistakes originate upstream, including insurance verification, prior authorizations, or coding problems, so that processes can be reviewed and upgraded where necessary.
- Predictive analytics to predict denials, time-to-payment, and many other insights to make adjustments to billing and workflows.
- The ability to predict recovery, including forecasting the dollars potentially available and the timeline to achieve final collections.
- Using machine learning algorithms, unpaid claims can be evaluated on a number of available parameters, such as aging and payer.
- Adaptability so that if additional areas are identified as automation candidates, integration is possible with ease.
Our unified RCM platform helps you deliver the best possible patient care without compromising reimbursement goals. Request a strategy call and find out how Quadax works for you.
Let’s take on the revenue cycle together!
