Improve reimbursement with an integrated approach

A full overhaul of your organization’s financial health can be a daunting task, but often a few simple, strategic tweaks can make the difference to improve your organization’s operations and augment your reimbursements.

By seeing how reimbursement programs like Medicare disproportionate share hospital (DSH), Worksheet S-10 Uncompensated Care, and Medicare bad debts are related, hospitals can save time, alleviate strain on their IT departments, free up staff to focus on high-priority work, and potentially improve their financial health.

Recent regulatory changes, like Transmittal 18, provide hospitals a unique opportunity to reassess their reimbursement practices and strategy, showing the value of completing three reporting types in tandem rather than one at a time.

Implement a united approach

A united approach to DSH, S-10, and Medicare bad debt can help hospitals synchronize their operations and produce more optimized reimbursement practices. To implement this, hospitals need to understand what each program is for, what’s needed, and how it relates to the other programs.

On their own, each program can provide important payments for hospitals. Yet, when integrated, the programs utilize nearly the same data, and assessing the overlap could save time and money.

Below are three practices executives can implement using the integrated data to unify their approach to DSH, S-10, and Medicare bad debt reimbursement.

Assess your vendors

Are your vendors meeting your needs? When it comes to DSH, Worksheet S-10, and Medicare bad debt logs, more vendors can lead to more headaches, especially if the vendors aren’t aligned.

Some hospitals waste time and energy by pulling unnecessary, duplicated data sets because different vendors require different data. Are your current vendors making the most of your data and helping your team succeed? Below are a few questions to consider: