This is part 9 of our 10-part checklist to make sure your charitable hospital can remain tax-exempt. Today’s topic concerns notifying the CEO and board of directors of your financial assistance policies and procedures.
This is part 9 of our 10-part checklist to make sure your charitable hospital can remain tax-exempt. Today’s topic concerns notifying the CEO and board of directors of your financial assistance policies and procedures.
Topics: 501r
This blog is one of a 10-part series on how charitable hospitals can retain their tax-exempt status. Today, we have arrived at part 8 - “We provide written notifications to individuals 30 days before making extraordinary collections actions.”
Topics: 501r
Continuing in our 10-Step Checklist To Maintain Your Tax-exempt Status, we arrive at point number seven: “Provide a Plain Language Summary of Your Financial Assistance Policy.”
While it is not technically necessary to provide this plain language summary to patient's you feel would be in need of financial assistance, you should consider doing this anyway, in an effort to demonstrate your compliance with the new 501(r) regulations.
Topics: 501r
To help understand the section of the 501(r) in regards to what hospitals can charge an uninsured patient, here is a quote from U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): “Tax-exempt hospitals don't have many measures of accountability for their special status. The law hasn't given them much direction, and so they've defined standards for themselves. Sometimes that's resulted in providing very little charitable patient care or other community benefits, failing to publicize charitable care to patients, charging indigent, uninsured patients more than insured patients, and using very aggressive collection practices... The provisions take steps to differentiate tax-exempt hospitals from for-profit hospitals and provide further transparency about tax-exempt hospitals' fulfilling their charitable mission. Congress, the IRS, and the public will now have additional tools and information to ensure that charitable hospitals act charitably.”
When you buy a car, it’s your job as a buyer to get the most amount of car for the least amount of cash.
Topics: change management, Services Vendor, Outsourcing, healthcare receivable management
Revenue Cycle Management Teams continue to stare down a monstrous business agenda. System conversions (pre and post), new business platforms (like ICD-10), acquisitions, consolidations, navigating the Affordable Care Act, and compression (shrinking revenues coupled with increased expenses) are just some of the difficult and complex jobs that make up most provider’s ‘to do’ list. No deus ex machina, no silver bullets, and no superheroes to save the day – winning will simply require a lot of calculated (tough) decisions and a lot of hard work.
As it is with sporting events and political campaigns, intangibles and soft skills will play a big role in determining whether leaders and managers within Provider organizations win. So looking at the keys to success for Revenue Cycle Management Teams – and in the category of intangibles and soft skills -- I see three elements that are musts:
Topics: Training, Continued Education
In my last blog Revenue Cycle Management, Way Downstream I said employee scorecards are a great tool to use within a revenue cycle management strategy. I wrote this blog to pass along tips and techniques for setting up and administering employee scorecards. Click here to download a sample Employee Scrorecard template.
Topics: Employee Relations, Revenue Cycle Management, Training
Two of the companies within my organization -- VARO Healthcare and BYL Collection Services -- service patient pay accounts receivable and patient pay bad debt.
Topics: healthcare receivable management, Revenue Cycle Management
Back in June I wrote a blog about the challenges of managing legal risk in the consumer contact business.
Topics: Risk Assessment, Compliance
Crazy times in the world of revenue cycle management. Based on everything you see, hear, and read: revenue cycle management teams have their hands full with a ‘to do’ list that runs the gamut on areas of concern – system conversions, new systems, new processes, new laws, new regulations, new financials, change management, and a ton of uncertainty. How to prioritize the work, how to parse out the work, and how to execute change has a lot of Revenue Cycle Management teams really stressed out.
Topics: healthcare technology, vendor management, Revenue Cycle Management, ICD-10
