Revenue cycle management: Hospital opportunities and challenges
As hospitals continue to look for ways to cut costs and wring more money out of their operations, they may want to explore a revenue cycle management approach, according to RevCycleIntelligence.
What would be in a hospital bill we could all understand?
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a contest to see who can design a hospital bill that patients can actually read..
It's been an open secret that most hospital bills have been unreadable for decades. The through line is pretty clear--my friend and colleague Lisa Zamoskywas sent home with single item $235.65 bill when she was born at the end of the 1960s. Much more recently, journalist/entrepreneur Steven Brill presented a bill for part of a medical procedure to Stephen Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth, for his translation services. Hemsley, whom I presume is no dummy, was unable to say what the bill actually represented.
This challenge is part of HHS' larger effort to put patients at the center of their own healthcare," said HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell in a statement. "With today's announcement, we are creating progress toward a medical bill that people can actually understand and a billing process that makes sense--progress that includes creating a forum that brings everyone to the table: patients, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and innovators."
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