Client Profile:
Critical Access Hospital with 25 acute beds and 36 long term care beds serving six counties, including five rural clinics with over 100 affiliated providers.
Challenge:
DNFB metrics would peak every Monday and dip into valleys by end of the week. The organization had a goal to eliminate the peaks and valleys to level out their DNFB trending and decrease their total DNFB which consistently averaged $8 million. The client’s inhouse staff was not willing to change their work schedules to include weekend shifts and prevent Monday morning spikes. During the project launch, the organization acquired more rural health clinics and redirected billing functions through a professional billing product in the electronic health record, which increased charging/coding complexity.
Approach:
The AQuity coding team added global resources on the weekends and further expanded their contributions throughout the week, focusing on professional fee coding volumes from the rural clinics. Domestic and global teams meet weekly to discuss any areas of focus to ensure work queues were completed daily and DNFB and other reporting remained level. A domestic governance team was created to meet with the client weekly and ensure alignment on focus areas.
Results:
The AQuity remote Coding Services team helped the client achieve:
- Leveled out the daily volumes and consistently met the expected goal of $2M DNFB or less.
- Around-the-clock coverage kept work queues clean. Anything the domestic team is not able to complete during the day, the global team completes during the night.
- The domestic team is no longer overwhelmed with Monday volumes.
- Due to the utilization of the AQuity global team, the organization was able to realize notable reductions in department expenses. Department costs were reduced by 14% for a savings of $400,000 over the first year.
To learn more about Aquity Coding Support Services, contact us today at info@aquitysolutions.com.
