Getty Images
Cerner’s Next Step With Revenue Cycle Management Technology
A new patient accounting product aims to improve consumer-oriented care and advance enterprise-wide management, bringing revenue cycle management technology to the next level.
Health IT powerhouse Cerner has been on working on revenue cycle management technology. The company perhaps best known for its EHR systems has been collecting client feedback and testing various capabilities to optimize its suite of revenue cycle management technology. Now, that work is culminating in a new patient accounting system that Cerner believes pulls the best capabilities from its two major revenue cycle management products.
That system is known as Cerner RevElate™. Released today, the patient accounting offering is the latest within the company’s enterprise-wide technology suite that pulls from the “clinically driven capabilities of Cerner Millennium®” and “scalable, enterprise capabilities of Soarian® Patient Accounting software.”
“This is what we would consider the culmination of what's been a multi-year journey bringing together the best of the best of the platforms that exist today,” Brenna Quinn, senior vice president of Enterprise Market Solutions at Cerner, told RevCycleIntelligence. “We started with a real solid proving ground and what we've advanced is the ability to extend that platform and the common user experience to give our clients a great experience going forward and a new patient accounting offering for future clients.”
The product represents the next generation of Cerner’s revenue cycle management products—which have seen some ups and downs over the years—but also the next step for providers in a more consolidated, consumer-driven world.
The consumer at the heart of it all
“The revenue cycle really begins with the consumer at the point in time that they engage in a healthcare journey,” Quinn stated.
Thanks to high-deductible health plans and other cost-sharing arrangements used by payers to shift financial responsibility to patients, what Quinn has observed has never been truer. Patient out-of-pocket costs have ballooned by 10 percent over the last year alone and will continue to grow at a similar rate through 2026, according to a recent study.
Patients are acting more like consumers as they become more responsible for total costs of care. Unfortunately, most hospitals and health systems do not have the strategy or technology to deliver consumer-oriented care, which includes price estimates, digital bill payment options, and convenient care access points, among other capabilities.
But consumerism in healthcare is something Cerner has been thinking about as it evolves its revenue cycle management technology.
“Our registration and scheduling are integrated to the consumer workflow so that clients can build out and extend that consumer engagement experience upfront as they think about their intake processes,” Quinn said. “Then, as they go in and begin a registration process, they can bring forward things like financial clearance so that when I, as a patient, engage with the system, I have better visibility into my financial responsibility. I can get access to financial counseling upfront and have a more streamlined experience through my whole healthcare journey.”
This front-end optimization is part of Cerner’s belief that revenue cycle should be “clinically driven.”
“We really believe in the power of putting together and unleashing clinical and financial data together,” Quinn elaborated. “When you think about placing orders and orders to schedule, the ability to drive the interactions right from the EMR but be thinking about the financial experience throughout and pushing workflow upfront so that from a patient perspective, they have better visibility into their financial responsibility right from the beginning.”
Clinicians also benefit from a clinically driven revenue cycle by having the ability to capture the right information upfront to ensure financial integrity later on, Quinn added. Consequently, organizations move from claims denial management to denial avoidance.
“It's really pushing work upstream by leveraging the power of the clinical data throughout the whole workflow and then improving the patient experience and visibility throughout their journey while driving much more automation and intelligence on the backend to support an enterprise view,” Quinn stated.
Enterprise tech supports growing business
The COVID-19 pandemic has done little to slow healthcare merger and acquisition activity, as hospitals and health systems continue to seek new partners to scale operations and advance care delivery. As consolidation increases, gaining an enterprise view into revenue cycle management is critical to success. However, managing revenue cycle at this level is not an easy feat for expanding organizations.
A new hospital or physician practice may operate on a completely different EHR system, and even more likely, different patient accounting software. The market for revenue cycle management technology is already so fragmented, with many options available to providers depending on what they are looking to improve.
Developing revenue cycle management technology that aligns with the new reality—consolidated healthcare—was top of mind as Cerner designed its next-generation product.
Cerner RevElate is an “open, extensible API platform,” Quinn explained, referencing application program interfaces (APIs). APIs allow unrelated software programs to communicate with one another, acting as bridges between technologies to enable data exchange regardless of how one technology was designed.
“What that brings is the ability of our clients to more seamlessly integrate third parties, whether it be third parties that Cerner has partnered with or third parties of a provider's choice,” Quinn said. “When you think about how they’re addressing their challenges and they’re putting in new solutions, this gives them the ability to build out their revenue cycle ecosystem through this extensibility and open platform.”
At the same time, facilities within a system will be able to operate using common workflows, user experience, and data management while leaders manage the enterprise’s revenue cycle.
“That’s really the way we need to go when we think about modernizing the ecosystem of revenue cycle,” Quinn added. “If you want to be able to continue to extend and grow your capabilities, it's going to be through the ability to have a seamless integration platform to work within.”
This open, extensible platform also caters to a provider’s consumer base.
“As we see provider organizations inch their way towards a post-pandemic recovery, the role of the consumer is elevated, and providers should ensure that they think about the consumer experience and how they have proactive engagement to make it a seamless, touchless experience. In order to do that, there is no single answer,” Quinn said.
Providers need to select the right solution sets for their consumers, whether they demand digital payment options, price transparency, or other consumer-oriented capabilities.
“Build out an ecosystem that is going to create a consumer engagement experience while you also have a robust automation platform to do the core patient accounting, the workhorse in the back, if you will,” Quinn advised.
BayCare Health System will be one of the first health systems in the country to leverage Cerner's new revenue cycle management technology and the organization plans to leverage the new platform for a better consumer experience. “Efficiently managing our enterprise revenue cycle process is paramount to the vitality of our organization. To put it simply, BayCare succeeds when we deliver a quality patient experience at every step, from intake to final billing,” said Lynda Gorken, vice president of Patient Financial Services at BayCare Health System.*
UPDATED 10/06/2021: Article updated to include a quotation from BayState Health System.
