News

Trust Key to Revenue Cycle Management Vendor Selection

By Ryan Mcaskill

In an interview, San Francisco Sport and Spine Therapy CEO Sturdy McKee spoke about the importance of vendor trust.

This is Part 1 of an exclusive interview. For Part 2, click here.

When it comes time to pick a new software solution, any healthcare provider needs to do their due diligence to ensure they are implementing the right system. For specialty care providers, this often means partnering with a vendor that is specifically geared toward their type of work. This is important because with the number of regulations that need to be followed, a vendor that is familiar what space can pay big dividends in the long run.

In an interview with RevCycleIntelligence.com, San Francisco Sport and Spine Therapy CEO Sturdy McKee spoke about the importance of partnering with the right vendor and why a proper revenue management strategy is critical to success. His facility has recently partnered with Clinicient, a revenue cycle management solution provider that specializes in the physical therapy space.

According to McKee, there are 300 electronic medical record solutions in the physical therapy landscape alone. This makes the idea of looking outside of it impractical.

  • KLAS: athenahealth, Aprima Earn Top Marks for Ambulatory RCM
  • AHA Recommends Amendments to MedPAC Payment System Upgrades
  • Physician Compensation on the Rise, Marking Post-Pandemic Recovery
  • “The idea of filling out and trying to get somebody else on board– there’s so many regulations and things that are specific to therapy world in general and PT in particular, that had a huge influence. I didn’t even look outside,” McKee said.

    He added that picking a new solution was a challenge because he had been burned in the past and tried multiple different providers.

    “We started out building ourselves and hired somebody to do the billing,” McKee said. “We contracted it out and changed that over a couple times. It’s such a complex process and things are forever changing, that to have one person in charge of it is very difficult. It’s hard for them to do the work and keep up on all the rule and contract changes and updates.”

    Then came the decision to outsource. According to McKee, when it comes to bill collecting, the first 80 to 90 percent is not the challenge. Instead the last 20 percent gets progressively harder to collect and the right resources can help make all the difference. Finding the right company to outsource to proved difficult. One vendor he tried only provided a collection rate of 20 percent, which was a massive blow to operations. While McKee and his practice were able to recover, it created a distrust of trying this approach.

    Clinicient came into play because McKee had adopted its Clinicients Practice Management Software in June 2013. That created a relationship that was fostered over the last 18 months and helped build the trust back. Now, with a new revenue management solution, the collection rate is around 92 percent and the benchmark is between 97 and 98 percent.

    “To be perfectly candid, after our experiences, I was not looking to outsource our billing and the revenue cycle piece. I mean that was the last thing on my mind and that is part of why we agreed to sign up with a practice management software and pay for it without incorporating the billing because I just didn’t trust anybody,” McKee said.

    Now, McKee feels like his practice is in a partnership, with both sides pushing for its success.