LMH Health (LMH), formerly Lawrence Memorial Hospital, is a health system serving northeast Kansas that encompasses a 174-bed hospital, 9 primary care and 15 specialty clinics. The hospital is a level IV trauma center with approximately 39,000 ED visits.
The Challenge: Simplifying Processes and Reducing Costs
Recently, LMH Health’s revenue cycle team undertook a comprehensive review of its operations, uncovering several opportunities to eliminate manual processes, boost productivity and decrease errors. Three primary areas of focus were identified:
- Removing time-consuming and expensive processes. Manual processing was prevalent. The staff sorted, stamped and scanned nearly all EOBs, correspondence and patient-payment exceptions from the lockbox. Processing and posting credit card and other payments was also manual.
- Reducing high volume of paper EOBs. These cumbersome workflows resulted from LMH’s unfavorable mix of paper-based to electronic remittances. LMH recognized a need to increase ERAs and lessen the number of EOBs received.
- Reducing high costs from payer credit card payments. LMH experienced costly and unnecessary fees associated with insurance payments made by credit cards.
The Solution: Payment Automation
The revenue cycle team understood that payment automation would help achieve the increased efficiency they were seeking. The team selected three criteria deemed critical to success.
- Robust functionality encompassing posting and reconciliation processes to create a paperless environment.
- Integration with existing core systems.
- Preservation of process automation and efficiency gains over time.
LMH also had a pressing need to manage migration to a new Cerner patient accounting system. Leadership was familiar with the issues associated when posting claims payments created in two different systems.
"CommerceHealthcare® is able to segregate our new and legacy payment data in comingled remittances, reducing error and smoothing the overall system implementation process."Susan May, Senior Director of Revenue Cycle, LMH Health
Achieving Accounts Receivables Automated
To achieve accounts receivables automation, LMH Health is utilizing RemitConnect® from CommerceHealthcare®. The technology and services platform automates the entire receivables posting and reconciliation process, managing checks, EOBs, ERAs and EFTs. Easy to implement, it integrates with revenue cycle systems. LMH is leveraging RemitConnect® to automate:
- Enrollment of paper EOBs to ERAs
- Payment posting
- Mapping of claim adjustment reason codes by payer
- Correspondence and denials routing
LMH will also utilize RemitConnect® to streamline what is typically a cumbersome process resulting from the accounting system migration. It’s remittance splitting feature segregates the new and legacy payment data in commingled remittances after auto reconciling them to received payments, reducing error and smoothing the overall system implementation process.
"Since implementing the technology, we’ve seen a substantial increase in efficiency."Susan May, Senior Director of Revenue Cycle, LMH Health
Reducing Manual Processes and Costly Payment Fees
LMH has realized multiple benefits from RemitConnect®:
- Improved staff productivity. Since implementing RemitConnect®, LMH has seen a substantial increase in efficiency. Time spent processing mail and running credit cards has dropped from an average of 48 hours per week to just over 22.
- Increased lockbox automation. Incoming paper is converted to digital files that now go directly to the LMH portal, reducing shipping and scanning costs.
- Payer card cost savings. In one month alone, CommerceHealthcare® was able to decrease card-related fees by:
- Cancelling over 15 insurance credit cards.
- Enrolling 11 active EFT accounts and closing 8 inactive.
- Enrolling 8 active ERA accounts and closing 9 inactive.
- Keeping receivables automated. CommerceHealthcare® was able to rapidly convert several large payers back to electronic payments after this scenario occurred at LMH. Currently the system is receiving 93% of payments via ACH and 96% of remittances electronically. The CommerceHealthcare® team is now continuously monitoring when changes happen and enrolling payers back into ERA/EFT programs.
Looking Ahead
LMH and CommerceHealthcare® are exploring several opportunities to further automate and improve receivables management processes, with the goal of further streamlining and cost savings.