Financial Sustainability Report: April 2021

The April Financial Sustainability Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, offers results of a health system’s assessment of its costs to deliver telemedicine services. Other content includes a case study of how a large medical group revamped its approach to compensating its employed physicians, and guidance on how to stem the losses many hospitals incur around referrals for ambulatory services.

Telemedicine

The economics of a telehealth visit: A time-based study at Penn Medicine 
By Neil Ravitz, MBA; Sean Looby, MHA; Calvin Jordan, MBA; and Andrew Kanoff, MHA 
Research into the costs of delivering telehealth versus in-person visits by the Department of Orthopaedics at Penn Medicine sought to answer the health systems’ questions about the long-term economic viability of telemedicine services, and to help inform their conversations with payers about how much they should appropriately be paid for the services.

Physician compensation

From chaos to unity: 6 steps for building a compensation plan for employed physicians
By Robin Nichols, CPA, MHA
When acquiring physician practices, health systems often develop employment arrangements on a case-by-case basis, leading to challenges due to the inconsistencies of multiple arrangements. A large physician practice’s effort to standardize its approach to compensating its employed physicians offer a case example of how to effectively address this problem.

Physician performance

Physician practice performance suffered during the 2020 pandemic year
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
By Cynthia Arnold and Matthew Bates
Recent research shows that volatility driven by COVID-19 rocked physician practices throughout 2020, but there were signs of recovery toward the end of the year.

Revenue cycle

How healthcare organizations can leverage CDI to meet strategic goals amid times of financial uncertainty
James P. Fee, MD
Six trends related to the COVID-19 pandemic have created a need for healthcare organizations to adopt a new, strategic and data-driven approach to managing their clinical documentation integrity (CDI) programs.

Outpatient payment

Physician-friendly web technology can help hospitals grow revenue from ambulatory referrals
By Denny Phillips
All too often, ambulatory orders from referring physicians do not result in delivered services and associated revenue for hospitals because of ineffective ordering processes. Hospitals can gain a competitive advantage ad avoid lost revenue by taking steps to simplify this process for both the referring physician and the patient.