Practice Management Alert

Making decisions around patient convenience can be a fruitful investment.

Incorporating certain technologies into your revenue cycle can help you provide a more convenient experience for patients, as well as keeping your revenue cycle turning with utmost efficiency, said Christopher Chandler, MHA, MBA, CPC, CGSC, in his AAPC HEALTHCON Regional 2025 presentation “Is Your Revenue Cycle Healthy?”

Find out which technology can help best in different points of your revenue cycle.

Lean On AI and Automation

With the revenue cycle being, by definition, cyclical, there are some parts where automation makes a lot of sense, and using artificial intelligence (AI) to code simple claims can further efficiency for revenue cycle management (RCM). Implementing these technological complements to your RCM can mean greater efficiency, fewer manual errors, and faster claims processing, Chandler said.

Machine learning can scrub claims, and many larger healthcare systems have claim scrubbing technology already in place, Chandler said. Robotic process automation (RPA) can handle repetitive tasks like checking claim status and posting payments, and Chandler suggested that AI could further efficiency even more by “checking in” on those tasks, which could possibly catch issues earlier.

Predictive analysis is another way in which revenue cycle folks can utilize the power of AI, as the technology can find patterns and do other types of analyses, helping practices understand, with real numbers, what’s at stake if they continue on the same path, Chandler said. Such technology can also provide specific ideas for adjustments to break patterns.

AI can also do some repetitive sorts of tasks that are a major pain point in the revenue cycle, like drafting appeal letters, Chandler said. One popular electronic health record (EHR) system has an AI tool that can generate an appeal letter — complete with supporting documentation — as soon as a denial is received and send it to the payer.

All of these possibilities are exciting, but don’t forget to ensure data security and validate AI outputs, Chandler said. “Don’t just trust what AI is doing. Audit it. Make sure it’s doing it correctly.”

Base Decisions on Data

Making business decisions based on data has always been a textbook best practice, but you may be able to get even more out of the data you collect if you can effectively visualize the information.

One tool organizations are adopting is the dashboard. A real-time dashboard can provide key RCM metrics, such as days in accounts receivable (A/R), clean claim rate, denial rate, and cash collections versus cash targets, Chandler said. Making such data visually easy to access and understand in one place, as a dashboard, can be extremely helpful.

“I can say, ‘Hey, we’re at this percentage error, we need to be at this percentage error, and we need this long to get there.’ I can say all that, but if you can visualize it, show it, show how far under the average you are or how far above average, or whatever it is, that visualization can be a very powerful thing, especially in trying to get others on board for whatever it is you’re trying to do,” Chandler said.

Having information presented in this way can help managers detect issues earlier and, of course, ground and guide decisions by identifying root causes and other patterns. It’s also a very useful tool when communicating with executives, as the visualizations provide a clear snapshot of the revenue cycle, Chandler said.

Once you’ve made your data accessible in these kinds of ways, you can incorporate AI for more advanced analytics, Chandler said. “So instead of just displaying the data, now, all of a sudden, it’s analyzing it, giving you predictions, giving you suggestions, things like that.”

Don’t Neglect Patient Satisfaction

Patients can be quite gracious about their healthcare experiences, and providers can make small but impactful improvements in the ways they engage patients to make even the business side of healthcare as tolerable as possible for them.

The patient portal is a really great way to ease a lot of pain points in patient engagement and interaction, Chandler said.

A secure and compliant patient portal allows patients great convenience in viewing bills, seeing their insurance payments, and paying balances, which improves collections. Organizations can incorporate technology like chatbots to give patients an easy way to ask questions about common billing questions, he said. This can ease patient frustration by providing access while decreasing bottlenecks with billing department calls.

One of the most important ways patient portals can boost patient satisfaction is through convenience, so an organization investing in payment experience tools to create a frictionless, self-service experience can be very worthwhile, Chandler said.

Incorporating available technology into your organization’s revenue cycle can ease pain points, boost collections, and make data-driven decision-making more accessible, increasing happiness for everyone involved.

Rachel Dorrell, MA, MS, CPC-A, CPPM, Production Editor, AAPC