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Editor's note: The following is an edited excerpt of the transcript of an April 27 editorial webcast, "Why Benchmark the Revenue Cycle?" conducted by Modern Healthcare. The two panelists discussed what benchmarks are being used to measure revenue-cycle performance and what has been the impact of using benchmarks to date. The panelists were Vivian Boyd, vice president of revenue cycle at Iowa Health System in Des Moines and Sheila Kuenzle, network vice president of revenue cycle at SSM Health Care in St. Louis. Modern Healthcare finance reporter and New York Bureau Chief Melanie Evans moderated the webcast. The webcast was sponsored by Craneware. Per editorial policy, sponsors are not involved in the development or publication of editorial content.
Melanie Evans: You mentioned you achieved in your first year a $20 million improvement in net revenue, or it sounded like you exceeded that target. Where did you see the most significant gain?
Vivian Boyd: I would say it was around our medical necessity identification of our impatient vs. observation. We also were able to improve in our controllable losses as well as our clinical documentation, working with our physicians to improve their documentation so that our health information management and our coding specialist teams were able to capture that.
Evans: Could you tell us which of the initiatives you undertook required perhaps the...