Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, April 2022

The April 2022 edition of HFMA’s Cost Effectiveness of Health Report includes a preview of cover story from the May issue of hfm, which focuses on telehealth, a key tool for promoting value-based care CEoH. Another article explores ways to promote health equity in revenue cycle processes, and a case study describes how one health system embarked on an initiative to achieve greater diversity among its revenue cycle staff.

Virtual Healthcare

Telehealth is primed for growth despite post-lockdown fade
By Eric C. Reese
If our nation is to achieve true cost effectiveness of health, virtual healthcare must play a pivotal role. In this preview of the May 2022 hfm cover story, two health system leaders share lessons learned from their efforts to develop effective telehealth programs as a key component in their long-term value-focused care strategies, and two thought leaders weigh in on keys to telehealth success.

Payment compliance

Why ensuring the appropriate assignment of observation status patients is so important
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
By Brian Pisarsky and Jill Annala-Rogers
Managing observation status requires a focused and consistent effort. Inappropriate assignment of observation status is expensive for patients and hospitals alike and can impede the goal of providing patients with the right care at the right time in the right setting.

Payment models

Cracks in the foundation (Part 4): Overcoming health systems’ brittle business models
By David W. Johnson
U.S. health systems’ rely on centralized, high-cost platforms (e.g., hospitals) to deliver routine care in an approach focused on optimizing revenues under fee-for-service payment. Yet this approach is inefficient and asset-heavy. To build less brittle, more consumer-centric delivery platforms, health systems must decant procedures to more convenient, lower-cost locations as they pursue full-risk contracting.

Health equity

3 ways the patient financial experience can improve health equity
By Mark Spinner
COVID-19 shined a bright light on disparities in access to care and health outcomes that existed in the U.S. healthcare system long before the pandemic, but far from improving the situation, it has exacerbated those disparities. Now, health system revenue cycle departments have an opportunity to be part of the solution.

Workforce diversity

Spectrum Health leaders create diversity council for CFO-led functions
By Amy Assenmacher, FHFMA, CHFP, Safia Bana, CPA, and Matthew Cox, CHFP, CPA
Leaders of finance-department-led functions at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, created a diversity council to promote greater diversity among their staff. The leaders saw that the demographic composition of Spectrum’s workforce did not mirror the communities it serves. They also recognized that a health system’s efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the larger community it serves must start within its own internal community.