Craneware, Inc. (AIM: CRW.L), a leader in financial performance improvement solutions for U.S. healthcare, today announced a presentation at the Healthcare Financial Management Association's (HFMA) Revenue Cycle Strategies Conference scheduled for November 5-7 in Chicago, IL.
The session will be led by an industry expert with more than 30 years experience - Director of Revenue Integrity, Wendi Accardi of Advocate Health Care, the largest fully integrated healthcare delivery system in Illinois, comprised of nine hospitals. Craneware Business Solutions Group Vice President Kelley Blair, MA, who has helped optimize business processes for leading healthcare organizations across the U.S., will co-present with Accardi on best practices for charge management, highlighting the benefits of managing by exception for greater accuracy, efficiency, compliance, accountability and optimized returns.
The focus of the 2009 HFMA Revenue Cycle Strategies conference is real improvements to healthcare operations, including best practices and innovations in the revenue cycle, as well as tools for achieving strategic results.
Today's most efficient way to manage healthcare financial and operational performance - without getting mired in increasingly complex, continually evolving regulations - is to define best practices for the organization, then identify instances where actions are out of alignment with those best practices. These "exceptions" to the defined best processes, act as flags that alert management to where potential problems exist. The exceptions also point towards how those problems are best addressed before they become established patterns.
Managing by exception is regarded as the most effective healthcare management method today, and yet many organizations are still using labor-intensive, error-prone spreadsheets, and getting lost in administrative complexity before they can take effective actions to address the issues. In fact, according to an April 2009 HFMA InstaPoll, nearly 50 percent of survey participants believe that using electronic tools to recognize patterns of error and measure performance against defined rules is the best approach to improving charge capture in a sustainable fashion. Yet, there remain over 26 percent who continue trying to solve the ever-evolving issues with process mapping and staff education, 18 percent who depend on external consultants, and almost 7 percent who rely on random audits.
"Healthcare organizations need to deploy solutions that allow them to manage by exception," said Keith Neilson, chief executive officer of Craneware. "This discussion will show how Craneware solutions can eliminate the labor-intensive, error-prone spreadsheet-type of management and consistently spotlight where potential problems exist, enabling healthcare management and staff take proactive, effective actions to address issues."
In an environment of significant change to its CDM-management process, Advocate Health Care used Craneware's Chargemaster Toolkit® to help support and implement their improved process. In addition, they used Craneware's Online Reference Toolkit® to strengthen compliance, replacing coding books. And, Bill Analyzer to identify issues that delay billing, patterns of incorrect coding or missing charges, and then help educate staff to correct problems before they keep recurring.
"Managing the CDM and Charge Capture Process" will be presented on Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Wendi Accardi and Kelley Blair. Both have significant healthcare operations experience with best practices for performance improvement and measurement in the management of revenue integrity projects. Attendees will learn how they can optimize their organization's reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and improve compliance using automated tools that enhance charge capture processes.
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