Practice Management News

KLAS Names Best Vendors for Financial, Revenue Cycle Management

The 2019 Best in KLAS report explored the top financial and revenue cycle management solutions for patient accounting, business intelligence, and more.

Revenue cycle management

Source: KLAS

By Jacqueline LaPointe

- Epic Systems continued to take the lead across several categories in the 2019 Best in KLAS report, including a key revenue cycle management market. In addition to being named the top overall software suite for the ninth consecutive year, Epic also won Best in KLAS for patient accounting and management.

Interviews representing more than 4,500 hospitals and 2,500 clinics showed Epic’s Resolute Hospital Billing software took top marks among large hospitals and integrated delivery networks (IDNs).

Hospital and IDN representatives highly rated Epic’s culture, loyalty, and relationship capabilities, resulting in an overall score of 89.5 points.

The patient accounting and management vendor pushed above MEDITECH, which earned an overall score of 73.4 points, and Cerner, which had 65.5 points.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Epic’s Resolute Hospital Billing solution took top place and MEDITECH’s C/S and 6.x Patient Accounting solution took second among hospitals and IDNs.

Massachusetts-based software and service company MEDITECH also earned second place for best patient accounting and management solution among community hospitals. athenahealth’s athenaCollector for Hospitals & Health Systems beat out MEDITECH’s C/S and 6.x Patient Accounting solution, scoring just 5.1 points more for overall score.

Other patient accounting and management vendors garnering top points among community hospitals included Cerner, MEDHOST, CPSI, and Allscripts.

In terms of other patient accounting software and services, KLAS found:

  • DCS Global’s Patient Access solution was number one for patient access software and services, followed by AccuReg Software’s PatientAccess solution and Change Healthcare’s Clearance Patient Access Suite (RelayHealth)
  • VitalWare’s VitalCDM moved to the number one spot for chargemaster management solutions, followed by Craneware’s Chargemaster Toolkit and nThrive’s CDM Master
  • Respondents ranked Quadax’s Xpeditor as the top claims management solution, while also giving top marks to SSI Group’s SSI Claims Management solution and Change Healthcare’s Assurance Reimbursement Management solution (RelayHealth)
  • nThrive’s Contract Management solution was the only service analyzed in the 2019 report, earning an overall score of 80.6 points
  • TransUnion Healthcare’s eScan solution was also the only insurance discovery vendor analyzed, earning a score of 90.5 points

In addition to patient accounting solutions, the 2019 Best in KLAS report also explored the top vendors and solutions for other revenue cycle management segments, including solutions for healthcare business intelligence and analytics, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and human capital management.

Healthcare business intelligence and analytics solutions

Healthcare business intelligence and analytics solutions are becoming vital tools for value-based care implementation. The solutions allow providers to synthesize and analyze a wide range of data from clinical and financial datasets to operational information.

Business intelligence and analytics in healthcare is a growing market, with 91 percent of healthcare organizations planning to undertake at least one technical adoption project in the next year.

Providers looking to implement a business intelligence or analytics solution may want to consult KLAS’ 2019 ratings.

In this year’s report, Dimensional Insight’s Diver Platform and Health Catalyst’s Analytics Platform continued to go head-to-head. The Massachusetts-based company Dimensional Insight scored slightly higher on operations and product than Health Catalyst, edging out the Analytics Platform by slightly more than one point.

Last year, Health Catalyst sat on top, beating out Dimensional Insight by a tenth of a point.

Tableau (85.7 points), Change Healthcare’s Analytics Explorer (85.6 points), and Microsoft’s BI Solutions (84.6 points) also scored high on the top healthcare business intelligence and analytics solutions list in 2019.

Other business analytics solutions earning top marks in 2019 included Strata Decision Technology and Change Healthcare for business decision support solutions and Medisolv and Nuance for quality management solutions.

ERP and human capital management solutions

Providers are becomingly increasingly interested in implementing enterprise resource planning and human capital management solutions as their organizations face intense pressure to lower costs and increase efficiency.

HIMSS Analytics anticipates hospital ERP adoption to significantly climb in the near future. While just 38.4 percent of hospitals currently have an ERP solution, about 46 percent of surveyed facilities said they have a strong interest in investing in a solution soon. 

Providers are leaning toward Workday’s HCM, Finance Management and Supply Chain solution for ERP software, according to KLAS. Respondents highlighted Workday’s culture, loyalty, and value, pushing the vendor to number one with 89.4 points.

Premier’s ERP solution followed, earning 85.9 overall points. Oracle and Infor also made the list of ERP vendors, but their overall scores were below the 81.2 point average.

In terms of human capital management, respondents told KLAS:

  • Verge Health and ASM scored above the software average for credentialing solutions
  • Schedule360’s Employee Scheduling and Labor Management solution took top place for nurse and staff scheduling solutions, followed by ShiftWizard, Change Healthcare’s ANSOS Staff Scheduling, and Virence Health’s Centricity Staffing and Scheduling (API)
  • Shift Admin’s Scheduling solution narrowly beat out QGenda’s Scheduling software for top physician scheduling software and services
  • Workday was also the number one talent management vendor, followed by HealthcareSource and Saba Halogen

Each financial and revenue cycle management market analyzed by KLAS is an important piece of any hospital or practice. As technology advances and healthcare becomes more complicated, providers should ensure their vendors and technologies are adding value to their business operations.