Healthcare providers are increasingly shifting their focus on cutting and managing the costs of operating hospitals and healthcare facilities, according to speakers at a conference this week, and revenue cycle management can play a key role in that conversation.
JPMorgan has been hosting healthcare executives for a conference this week in San Francisco and speakers have been emphasizing that any growth will come from better managing expenses than from any likely increase in revenue, according to a published report.
Individuals are not going to keep paying 5% to 7% more for their healthcare every year, one executive said yesterday.
Intermountain Healthcare, for example, touted its move to outsource 2,300 jobs to a third-party revenue cycle management company, R1 RCM. Those individuals would have likely lost their jobs due to increased automation if they were not outsourced, Intermountain’s chief executive said.
Many in the ARM industry, especially collection agencies that focus on healthcare debts or that provide some first-party collection services, have been moving toward offering more back-office services to clients, as a means of further cementing partnerships in an industry undergoing tremendous consolidation, but also to diversify beyond third-party collection activities.
One speaker at the conference called on his fellow healthcare executives too “disrupt” the industry and to be “zealots” when it comes to managing costs. Those words sound like opportunity knocking for the ARM industry.
