Is Revenue Cycle Management Sexy?

A few months back I attended a user group meeting for a large EHR vendor. While waiting for the opening keynote speech I was talking with the EHR vendor’s PR person. During our conversation they made a really interesting comment that stuck with me. I can’t remember the exact context of the conversation, but they said something to the effect of, “We also do a lot of work in revenue cycle management (RCM) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), but that’s not the sexy things that people like to write about even though that’s where a lot of the money is in our business.”

It begs the question, “Is Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) sexy?”

Her comment really has had me thinking about revenue cycle management and particularly her final point about that being where the money is in their business. I’ve always believed in business that it’s a smart thing to follow the money, whether its sexy or not. On that note, I plan to do a series of posts related to revenue cycle management here on EMR and EHR. As for ACOs, I already started a series of ACO posts on EMR and HIPAA starting with my post “ACO Model Risks and Rewards.”

While I might not try and achieve the lofty goal of making revenue cycle management sexy, I do hope to be able to dig into many of the dynamics around revenue cycle management. I hope to look at reasons why revenue cycle management is so popular and doing so well. Why do so many doctors and hospital CIO/CFOs turn to revenue cycle management for their practice and hospitals? Are all RCM options created equal? What separates the various RCM options? What will be the future of revenue cycle management going forward?

In the past week, a number of online discussions have kicked up around a post I did on EMR and HIPAA around Streamlining Revenue Cycle Automation. The discussion shows there’s a real interest in discussing this topic.

I’m also interested to hear your thoughts on revenue cycle management. Are there areas you’d like me to cover? Are there important trends in RCM that more people should know about? No, this isn’t an open invitation for revenue cycle management companies to pitch me. I’m interested in good information about what’s happening with revenue cycle management.

No doubt that managing the revenue of a hospital of physician practice is incredibly important. Hopefully we can add to that knowledge base. Plus, I think it’s likely worth exploring how adoption of EHR is impacting revenue cycle management as well. Will there be less of a need for revenue cycle management with more EHR software or more of a need for RCM?

Let’s hear your thoughts, suggestions and ideas about RCM in the comments. Hopefully I can build on them in future posts.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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