Collecting in Helathcare Journal Source: The Academy of Healthcare Revenue
Utilizing Results-Driven Metrics to Improve Collector Performance
January, 2007 – With increasing scrutiny of healthcare providers’ collections practices and the growing need to effectively collect patients’ self-pay balances—which often requires significant time and effort—monitoring and improving biller and collector performance has become essential for providers. Many providers closely monitor their overall collection department performance, tracking activity-based metrics such as number of collection calls made each day or number of accounts touched. By tracking results-oriented criteria for each individual staff member, providers can improve the effectiveness of using performance monitoring data to identify improvement opportunities.
Best-performing providers go beyond traditional PFS department tracking metrics to drill down to the performance of each biller and collector, enabling department leaders to identify additional training needs, accurately award incentives, and administer frequent performance feedback sessions for staff members. Individual billing and collection staff performance metrics frequently focus on results-driven criteria such as number of accounts billed per week, dollars billed out per week, average time-to-bill, individual A/R days, dollars collected, and number of accounts resolved. In addition to tracking individual performance metrics, leaders at best-performing facilities periodically audit accounts worked by individual billers and collectors to assess their quality. These audits evaluate actions such as whether billers and collectors followed all payer requests and requirements, appropriately flagged accounts, and promptly followed up on accounts needing further attention.
After collecting individual performance data, PFS leaders must effectively inform staff members of their performance and areas for improvement. Since staff members’ performance evaluations are often conducted only on a semi-annual or annual basis, conducting more frequent feedback meetings can be effective in improving performance as well as staff member satisfaction. When managers only conduct an annual performance evaluation, they may give employees one years’ worth of criticism, negatively affecting staff members’ morale and job satisfaction. With a year’s worth of objective individual performance metric data at hand, managers can give staff members an accurate picture of their performance history, allowing both parties to identify improvement strategies.
Texas-based Baylor Health System, which includes 11 acute-care facilities, utilizes a performance tracking system to monitor individual collectors on a weekly basis. Some of the criteria tracked include the aging of each collector’s accounts, the volume of accounts worked each week, and the quality of staff members’ actions (e.g., if collection staff members asked payers appropriate questions and conducted necessary follow-up action). With the information gathered from Baylor’s tracking system, collectors are given a weekly quality review score. Due in part to this comprehensive approach to monitoring individual performance and fostering accountability in the revenue cycle, especially in the back-office, Baylor has been able to consistently reduce its A/R days in previous years, as the graph below shows.
By monitoring results-driven metrics at an individual biller and collector level, PFS leaders will have more meaningful and objective measurements to identify individual staff members’ areas for improvement—ultimately making feedback sessions more productive, as staff members can see their level of performance and understand where they need to improve.
The Academy of Healthcare Revenue
The Academy of Healthcare Revenue is a membership-based community that provides healthcare leaders with objective research focused specifically on the healthcare revenue cycle. Members receive an unlimited supply of all research--including benchmarking and best practice reports, implementation tools, monthly journals, attendance to virtual conferences, and more--designed to enable them to improve their revenue cycle processes and financial health from within. Furthermore, The Academy's membership offering is tailored to team members throughout the revenue cycle, from executive leadership to patient access, coding, billing and collections, and clinical staff, helping to drive process improvement efforts revenue cycle-wide. Collecting in Healthcare is one of four journals written by The Academy of Healthcare Revenue monthly.
To learn more about the benefits of membership with The Academy of Healthcare Revenue, contact us today.
Media Contact Ross Monaghan
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