Last week, our team attended the annual Ohio Health Care Association (OHCA) convention. Our Senior Customer Success Director Debi Damas also lead a session on the state of senior care. She discussed pandemic challenges and encouraged the exchange of strategies to mitigate change. The following is a recap of this valuable session.

Where does senior care stand and what the heck happened?

• Nursing home staffing shortages only worsened as 2020 came to a close
• 48 states saw occupancy of 80% or less, with some as low as 56%

What can senior organizations do right now?

• Develop purpose-driven, compassionate staff
• Adopt technology to increase connectedness, efficacy, and optimal health
• Embrace telehealth
• Develop a culture of positive aging framed by wellness
• Establish trust by being prepared for emergencies and unexpected events

What happened with senior living census?

• Increased push to home health care
• People wanted no part of facility-based care
• Long-term care (LTC) facilities were not admitting
• Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) turned beds/halls into COVID units
• Senior care providers are now seeing slight increases in census

How can senior organizations build census?

• Marketing value-adds to prospective residents:
• Amenities
• Telehealth
• Wellness focus
• Sharing positive performance data with hospitals:
• Vaccination rates
• Infection control
• Outcome data, readmission rates
• Identifying an ideal niche based on ICD code(s)

How does revenue look in senior care?

• 55% of SNFs are operating at a loss
• Significant increases in claims denials, resulting in more reviews
• Some managed care is moving from PDPM to levels
• Per Mark Parkinson (CEO of AHCA/NCAL), long term success comes down to: 
• State Medicaid rates
• Payer mix
• Financing
• Operational excellence

What staffing trends emerged among senior care employers?

• Rigid schedules/Inflexible call off policies
• 23% of nursing homes had direct care staff shortages in May
• 96% received some government assistance
• 47% received funds from Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP)
• 82% received funds from CARES Act/Provider Relief Fund
• 52% received Medicaid add on or increase from state government

What can senior care organizations do to improve staffing?

• Increase the ways you make staff feel valued
• Change your pay structure
• Offer bonuses – sign-on, working all scheduled shifts, etc.
• Revise staffing policies to benefit employees
• Increase flexibility to accommodate child/eldercare challenges
• Provide a career path; demonstrate benefits of added skills and education
• Be attentive and thorough with screening and hiring
  

To reiterate one of Debi's earlier points, technology can help. Here are three senior care providers who are benefiting right now from our software.

• Embassy Healthcare saves $1.5M in labor with primeVIEW App
• Symphony Care Network increases revenue $1,200/stay with Managed Care MASTER app
• Hyatt Family Facilities rely on primeVIEW app to consolidate data for monitoring Five Star and PBJ reporting

Kimberly Sturm, primeClaims Senior Project Manager, will be sharing some of the best practices from our top clients to help you get paid faster and to streamline you revenue cycle management processes.

During the webinar, we'll:

• Explain the most common errors resulting in rejection
• Discuss the significance of claim filing indicators
• Explain the difference between 22X and 23X billing codes
• Demystify 50 Shades of Medicare Secondary Payers (MSPs)

As a 25+ year veteran of LTPAC, working in both facility-based and EHR organizations, she appreciates the importance of NOT leaving cash on the table.

We are very excited to introduce our new home page for primeCLAIMS that is equipped with "Quick Links" that allows business office managers and billers short cuts in and out of every step in the revenue cycle.  You can now skip the menu and dive right into the application at exactly the place you need to be.

The Quick Links Navigation is just the beginning of application improvements Prime Care Technologies has planned for the post-acute provider in 2017.

Want to learn how your business office can collect more cash quicker? Click the button below:

This webinar takes you through the life of a claim – identifying key players and to-dos at each stop, as well as potential pitfalls that delay your cashflow. You’ll leave with real takeaways on how to speed up your cash flow!

AGENDA

• Steps from admission through collecting revenue
• Common challenges with revenue cycle management 
• Methods to minimize effects on cash flow

Revenue Cycle Management is constant, a year-round effort, but periodically worth occasional scrutiny and cleaning up. Likewise, if you bill Medicare for services and need to file secondary claims, then taking a look again at automation through a clearinghouse may result in cleaning up those outstanding AR balances. This month’s blogs offer useful insights to help AR managers refresh revenue cycle best practices and remove the clutter of uncollected revenue.  

Spring clean your revenue cycle

This is the time of year to open the windows, air out the house, deep clean long neglected spaces, and tidy up. For AR managers, it’s also a good time to “spring clean” the revenue cycle in a few key ways.

1. Update and refresh your payers’ contracts “wiki”.
2. Check the aging.
3. Revisit your pre-admission screening procedures.
4. Make sure the census is correct.
5. Stay on top of your Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).
6. Conduct a thorough claims triple check.
7. Engage the right clearinghouse.

Learn how these steps can help you freshen up your revenue cycle management practices.

Secondary payer claims – finding ROI (Reducing Outstanding Income)

The ROI of automating secondary claims through a claims clearinghouse is potentially huge. Traditionally billers completed paper forms and mailed them to the payer. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t and, some providers are still submitting claims in this way. Phone calls and error-generated resubmittals contribute to a complex, cumbersome, costly, and prolonged payment process. With electronic claims automation, providers can securely submit and track claims to multiple payers all in one portal. In this blog, we highlight some of the advantages a claims clearinghouse can offer and the potential ROI when doing so.

Discover the benefits and ROI of automating secondary claims submission. 

Are you collecting all your secondary claims and
how much does it cost to do so?

Check it out!