47 percent of hospital leaders plan to outsource their coding efforts by October 1, 2015, according to a recent survey of 650 hospital leaders by Black Book Rankings. Given the 21 percent national coder shortage by industry estimates, hospital CFOs must look beyond coding to optimize their HIM department operations to improve their overall efficiency.
With the HIM department being the critical link between clinical documentation and revenue cycle, here are four critical statistics for hospital CFOs to know about HIM performance:
– 40% of clinical documentation is not ready for ICD-10. The relationship between physicians, CDI and HIM must be strong.
– 38% of healthcare organizations expect revenue to decrease during the first year of ICD-10. HIM professionals should be part of your claims denial team.
– Nationwide, HIM departments receive over 28 million requests for medical records from RACs, patients, attorneys, and other third parties annually—generating nearly 1.5 billion in electronic and paper pages.
With ICD-10 deadline coming, the challenges are even worse. The infographic shown below created by MRA, the largest Health Information Services Company in New England explores the critical relationship between HIM and revenue cycle.
