Posted by: Edelberg & Associates
We at Edelberg & Associates believe that that the impact of this new wave of business intelligence applications on the companies and clients we serve can be truly significant. As many of our followers know, Edelberg & Associates focuses on the intersection of revenue and regulation for hospitals, providers and others in this value chain. The impact of analytics in an environment where EMR (electronic medical record systems) adoption continues and the structured data it produces grows exponentially cannot be understated. This new world order of data + regulation equals incredible opportunities for entities that are able to successfully adopt the infrastructure and expertise to harness its power.
At Edelberg & Associates our motto is “Reduce Risk & Increase Value”. Sometimes this is easier said than done in a world where changes in coding and documentation requirements for payors change almost daily. We have found that one of the best tools that our company has to deliver on our bold statement is to utilize and leverage our significant investment in business intelligence systems and the experts that run it. Today, our company is seeing first-hand the benefits of this visibility for ourselves and our clients. One of the key benefits includes marrying up medical coding information with our client’s EMR and billing systems. When this data is linked together in a way that is meaningful and well thought out it provides insights that are truly important. These insights can tell you things such as:
- Encounter characteristics across facilities, by day, week, month, time of day, etc.
- Average acuity based on geography, age, and time dimensions
- Average patient charges for facilities, providers, acuities, chief complaints
- Opportunities for documentation improvement across various dimensions (provider, facility, department, etc)
In a nutshell, the old methodologies of reporting are no longer relevant. Among many take-aways that I had in San Diego was make sure you are with a medical coding and compliance company that understands fully the current environment of data reporting and where the market is headed and how it can not only improve healthcare operations but also reduce your risk & increase your enterprises value.
POST UPDATE….
Shortly after our conference broke up we saw this Tweet from the highly influential and visionary Vinod Khosla… Clearly he also sees a future where data and the science that makes it applicable becomes ever more important.