Eight Health Care Systems Honored for Revenue Cycle Management

In today’s lackluster economy and rising self-pay account environment, a hospital’s ability to get the money is a success story. That’s why SearchAmerica, a Minneapolis-based company specializing in patient address verification, payment prediction and screening for financial assistance, is recognizing eight health care systems and inducting them into its Best Practices Hall of Fame.

The annual award honors health systems that have achieved enhanced efficiencies, implemented innovated best practices and seen significant return on investment using SearchAmerica’s solutions and recommended best practices. The 2008 Best Practices awards go to:

• Integris Health of Oklahoma City, Okla., for workflow redesign that resulted in payment received prior to going to a collection agency in 98 percent of its accounts.
• The Methodist Hospital System of Houston, for resolving a significant degree of accrued bad debt and properly classifying patients eligible for more than $20 million in charity care.
• Novant Healthcare of Winston-Salem, N.C., for reducing its bad debt by 50 percent and reducing its charity enrollment processing time by 90 percent.
• Resurrection Health Care of Chicago, for improving Emergency Department Point of Service collection by 250 percent.
• SSM Healthcare of St. Louis, for continued advances in leveraging SearchAmerica solutions into its processes and substantiating their mission in the community.

SearchAmerica also recognized Northside Hospital of Atlanta, St. Raphael’s Hospital of New Haven, Conn., and Sutter Delta Medical Center of Antioch, Calif., for their strong commitment to revenue cycle improvements.

“These organizations exemplify the innovative spirit and commitment to excellence that is truly admired by its patients and industry,” Daniel Johnson, Search America’s president and chief executive said in a statement.