Abington Memorial Hospital improves RM cycle

Abington Memorial Hospital is replacing 26 disparate systems from various vendors with a single end-to-end revenue management system from McKesson in an effort to streamline workflow and make processes more seamless and efficient.

“Our existing revenue management and financial systems simply were not helping us meet the complex challenges in today’s healthcare industry - and they were not enabling us to deliver the level of service that our patients deserve,” said Michael Walsh, senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer at the Abington, Pa.-based hospital.

Abington’s new system will include Atlanta-based McKesson's Horizon Enterprise Revenue Management solution, which is designed to improve the economics of care by automating operational and financial processes and more efficiently connecting hospitals with payors, financial institutions, physicians and consumers.

Tasks that were typically performed after discharge will now be carried out during the patient registration process, enabling clinicians to gather better information upfront. This will allow hospital officials to better inform patients of treatment options and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and collection of payments when services are delivered.

“I believe that moving processes to the front end of the cycle will have a direct impact on patient satisfaction by decreasing wait times and reducing paper transactions,” said Alison Ferren, the hospital's vice president of information technology and chief information officer. “Patients will be able to check in using kiosk technology in waiting rooms and lobbies. With a simple swipe of a credit card, they can verify their insurance eligibility, confirm or provide accurate address information and make their co-payments.”

Processes will be automated based on industry best practices and managed by exception, not inspection – making it possible for management to be alerted to important issues in real time. The goal is to eliminate bottlenecks and streamline workflow throughout the hospital. 

Abington is slated to begin implementing the sytems early this year. The new technology is projected to reduce bad debt and result in improved productivity through the elimination of redundant work and many manual tasks. The hospital also expects to improve its profitability by reducing days in accounts receivable below industry best-practice levels.

“We are empowering healthcare providers to operate more effectively where they can truly make a difference in the lives of the patients they serve,” said Duncan James, group president of Health Systems Solutions at McKesson Provider Technologies.

Photo by zpeckler and obtained under Creative Commons license.