Dive Brief:
- Kansas City, MO-based Cerner has created a new executive position to oversee revenue cycle concerns as the healthcare industry transitions to value-based reimbursement, alternative payment models, and other changes, Becker’s Hospital CFO reports.
- Starting Sept. 1, Jeff Hurst of Adventist Health System, who currently serves as senior vice president of finance at Adventist’s Florida Hospital in Altamonte Springs, will be the new senior vice president of revenue cycle management and president of RevWorks, Cerner’s revenue services management division.
- Last month, Coordinated Care Oklahoma was the first health information exchange partnered with Cerner to connect with the U.S. Department of Defense.
Dive Insight:
Cerner has worked with Adventist for a number of years to maximize some of the health IT firm’s acute revenue cycle solutions for the 40-hospital system.
“I don’t have a crystal ball — I can’t tell you exactly where healthcare is going to be 20 years from now — but what I can tell you with a degree of certainty is that payment rates are going nowhere but down” Hurst told RevCycleIntelligence.com.
“The ability of health systems and providers across the industry to truly optimize their revenue cycle and squeeze every single dollar they can out of it, which in turn allows them to pass value on to those end shareholders, is going to be an accelerated priority in the future,” he added.
In an interview with Becker’s Hospital Review, Hurst said clients are looking for transparency and simplification in the revenue cycle. “As we move into this next evolution and iteration from a consumerism standpoint, I think there’s going to be more and more pressure on the provider side, which puts more and more pressure and creates more opportunities for Cerner to deliver solutions that allow us to create that transparency that the end customers are seeking from a provider side,” he said.
Cerner President Zane Burke told Becker’s that clients want a single bill for their client at the end of the day, and the ability to financially track the patient throughout the healthcare system.