Revenue cycle gets tune-up from University of Mississippi help desk model

Photo of University of Mississippi Medical Center from Facebook.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center’s initiative to set up a health information management help desk that runs like a traditional IT unit is having a positive effect on the health system’s revenue cycle, according to Leigh Williams, director of revenue cycle and health information management.

The system plan involved repurposing HIM staff focused on incomplete medical records and creating an on-call help desk that links to physicians. The arrangement relies on the same kind of screen-sharing tools used by IT staff to troubleshoot tech systems. The result is a level of physician engagement that helped cut the hospital's delinquency rate from 40 to 13 percent in the most recent reporting period.

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“At the time we started, the hospital had $40 to $50 million on hold due to delinquencies, with close to six A/R days tied to physician documentation issues,” Williams told Healthcare Finance. “You can’t have 6 days in coding. Those were huge barriers for revenue cycle”

The help desk model gave physicians a lifeline, linking them with IT staff without having to put them in the same room.

Coupled with other UMMC initiatives, the help desk is credited with getting accounts receivable (A/R) days down to less than one, Williams said, with just $5 million in payments on hold.

“Revenue cycle managers don’t tend to think about how they can fully leverage technology,” said Williams, which she hopes to help change by speaking on several panels and presentations at the HIMSS15 conference in Chicago this April.

On April 12, Williams and John Showalter, the hospital’s chief health information officer, will speak at the Revenue Cycle Solutions Summit about how the UMMC clinical documentation program is making revenue cycle more efficient. The summit is sponsored by Healthcare Finance.

[Register for the Revenue Cycle Solutions Summit]

Then, on April 13, Williams and Showalter will give a presentation at HIMSS 15 on the help desk model.

One of the best things about the help desk is how cheap it was to set up, Williams said.

“The software was a screen sharing tool that was in use already, which we had certain licenses for. There were no FDE (full-disk encryption) additions and no outlay of real costs aside from time,” she said.

Ultimately, the effect the systems had on physicians made a major difference in tightening the revenue cycle process, Williams said.