Northwell partners with Clinithink on revenue cycle management
CLiX revenue automates the current manual operation of initial chart review for the revenue cycle staff.
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Northwell Health has signed a 10-year agreement with Clinithink to use its patented technology and natural language processing in revenue cycle operations.
Clinithink's CLiX technology and NLP capabilities will allow Northwell to process millions of documents in hours, instead of days, the health system said. The technology automates the initial chart review for revenue cycle staff, an operation that must otherwise be conducted manually.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Manual chart review is time-consuming for a large organization such as Northwell Health, which is among the largest healthcare systems in New York State.
"Even though we have an extensive revenue cycle management team, we know we cannot currently cover all our activity with manual chart review, especially in relation to identifying co-morbidities," said Dr. Gerard Brogan, chief revenue officer for Northwell Health. "Northwell recognized the power of clinical NLP that we could use to assist our revenue cycle teams several years ago."
CLiX revenue can augment the review of cases and give support for denials management, without adding staff, Brogan said.
Clinithink's platform delivers analysis of unstructured data to understand vulnerable populations, to highlight phenotypes or to reduce the risk of denied claims for providers, Clinithink said.
In an increasingly competitive market, the technology brings value to the revenue cycle team, said CFO Michele Cusack.
THE LARGER TREND
Most health systems have automated parts of their revenue cycle processes, have started on that journey or, like Northwell, are looking for ways for continued improvement.
Northwell Health in the New York metro area has 22 hospitals, more than 800 outpatient facilities and more than 16,000 credentialed physicians. It delivers healthcare to more than 2 million people annually and operates in more than 100 medical specialties.
Northwell has 77,000 employees – 18,500-plus nurses and nearly 5,000 employed doctors, including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners.
Twitter: @SusanJMorse
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org
