Publication by Healthcare Purchasing News
Like any decent recipe where the slightest ingredient deviation in amount/measurement or type can change the taste of the end product, so goes the accuracy and integrity of an organization’s revenue stream with the inclusion of erroneous or missing data.
The oft-quoted refrain since the 1980s about automating “bad” data just means you’re transmitting bad data faster still applies. Even now, four decades after those initial concerns were raised, serious fundamental questions about progress linger. Some 40 years ago, the internet was not widely accessible to the general public or industry at large, but it has developed into a ubiquitous part of everyday life now. Further, healthcare organizations are pursuing artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotic process automation (RPI) and other seemingly progressive solutions.
Whether we’ve learned anything from the advancement of technology outpacing the fundamental accuracy and integrity of the data themselves remains questionable – particularly involving the circumstances if the pursuit of basics fails to catch up.
From a supply chain perspective, revenue integrity has little to do with coding and instead hinges in part on collecting accurate data within financial and operational information systems based on what’s in the item master (IM) as well as the charge data master (CDM). To some degree, how those two databases are linked or synchronized can make a difference, too. Yet not all healthcare organizations connect their IMs and CDMs, forging a necessary conduit between the expense and revenue sides of the balance sheet.
While industry experts and observers acknowledge that uniting these two databases can be integral to revenue integrity, they also concur that it’s not as simple as flipping a switch or plugging in a software widget, which is why the notion faces resistance.
Read what Prodigo's VP, Data Analytics, Marketing & Product Strategy, Marlin Doner, said about revenue integrity in this Healthcare Purchasing News article.
Click here to read the full article.