Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock, you have probably heard of the rising trend of outsourcing healthcare services and the increasing debate over whether it is a sustainable solution to the resource shortage in the healthcare industry.
However, the bigger concerns about the fate of outsourcing healthcare services are whether these solutions are scalable or not and how can healthcare services be outsourced without compromising the quality of service?
Well, let’s share the good news first; with the use of smart people, robust processes and advanced technologies, one can easily build optimized and scalable solutions for outsourcing healthcare services. Whether we are talking about large healthcare providers with multiple locations across the country or small practices with limited staff, ARDEM’s healthcare outsourcing solutions can be customized to an organization’s specific needs and requirements.
The second good news is that you can outsource most of your administrative and management-based healthcare services and enjoy a faster cycle time along with greater accuracy in revenue cycle management.
Industry experts estimate that the healthcare IT outsourcing department will grow up to 67.50 billion USD by 2024 with a growth forecast of 7.5 % CAGR.
Curious to learn more about what is outsourcing in healthcare and how these services are transforming the healthcare industry for the better? Just continue reading below:
Reduced Cost of Operations
The life-saving services provided by the healthcare industry make it one of the most important industries everywhere. However, this fact doesn’t just make healthcare services indispensable, it also makes it an industry with one of the highest costs of operations.
Just take a look at the scope of services that include everything from the conduction of multiple tests to the diagnosis and treatment of maladies including surgery, regular check-ups, and medicine. With surgery, you don’t just need a team and a state-of-the-art operation theatre, you also need dependable support staff to provide excellent pre-op and post-op patient care.
All of the above services require extensive staff resources including technicians, nurses, doctors, and cleaners to ensure the smooth functioning of their day-to-day tasks.
Another fact to keep in mind is the scope of the administrative processes that encompass everything from patient submission forms and health records to insurance information and claims processing. Staff shortage in these departments can cause you to end up with constantly tired staff, leading to careless errors and slip-ups that can seriously compromise your customer experience and your revenue.
So, what should you do in such conditions? The answer is simple; partner with a trusted healthcare outsourcing company that can efficiently carry out your back end processes and deliver higher quality and consistency of data while reducing your cost of operations.
Saving Lives with Improved Patient Care
As a healthcare provider, your core competency is providing quality services that save lives, and carefully tracking and monitoring your patient from the process of admission to recovery. Outsourcing your revenue, applications and claim processing services can reduce both your costs and your administrative backlog, leaving your resources free to focus on their core competencies.
It’s a no-brainer that strategic outsourcing of administrative and management processes enables hospital/healthcare providers to focus on their primary tasks, i.e., provide efficacious treatment to their charges alongside excellent patient care for a faster and successful recovery.
After all, what would you have your hospital staff rather do? Overwork themselves to process endless amounts of forms, bills, and applications or work regular hours and provide excellent healthcare services to your patients? The choice is obvious, is it not?
You hire experts in the field of data processing and back office support solutions so that your experts can do what they do best, i.e., save lives.
Running Efficient Data Operations
Healthcare services run on data, from periodically recording the vitals of the patient to cataloging their stages of recovery, a patient’s medical history is etched and archived using consistent data and the billing/claims processes are no different.
Medical records, patient history, insurance applications, medical claims, and even test requisition forms, all contain sensitive data that has to be processed and manipulated. Many times this data contains sensitive information including PHI/PII which must be processed with extra care. That’s exactly why you need to find a healthcare outsourcing partner that you can trust.
At ARDEM, we understand the importance of data security, especially when dealing with something as sensitive as a patient’s medical history and billing details. With us, you can lay your fears to rest as security and accuracy are at the forefront of every ARDEM contract. We are also happy to announce that our HIPAA compliance and privacy policies are already in place along with a series of stringent security measures.
With the aid of our high-speed scanners and cutting-edge OCR technology, we are more than capable of streamlining your back end processes with our data entry, document processing, and document conversion services.
Shorter Revenue Cycle Time
Revenue cycle time refers to the process by which healthcare providers track revenue for a complete patient care cycle, i.e, from the initial/first appointment to the final payment of the balance. The process encompasses all the administrative and clinical procedures required for the collection of payment for services provided.
As you can guess, correctly processed data is essential to the entire function of revenue cycle management and even the smallest of errors can lead to delayed payments or no payments at all. The most common billing errors include the failure to correctly verify insurance, filing incomplete claims, coding errors and failure to miss filing deadlines.
When we talk about revenue cycle management solutions, data collection is the first and most crucial step in the overall process. At ARDEM, we employ a mix of advanced technologies, AI, and machine learning to deliver high-quality and accurate data.
Our data extraction technologies including optical character recognition technology and specialized scanners are further augmented by our automation bots to extract and organize data, effectively filling in any missing information to deliver a higher rate of success.
Increased Accountability in Sample Management
Sample testing is another crucial function of healthcare services that is also dependent on accurate data entry and processing.
Accurate sample processing is not just important for a correct diagnosis, it is equally vital for the recommendation of proper treatment, a careless mistake while labeling or entering data can result in the administration of incorrect treatment with devastating consequences.
According to an article in the Clinical biochemistry journal, hospital-based errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the US. In the case of clinical laboratories, errors in early testing made up 75% of the total laboratory errors, 26% of which may have had detrimental effects on patient care. This includes unnecessary procedures/investigations, incorrect treatment and resulted in an increased dissatisfaction with healthcare services.
Outsourcing sample management can help eliminate these errors, reduce your processing costs and also save lives in the process.
At ARDEM, we take the task of sample data processing very seriously and work in compliance with HIPAA to protect sensitive data like PII and PHI while processing patient forms. We also work with your company’s standard operating procedures to ensure PDMA compliance.
All data that is scanned and extracted runs through multiple validation checks to ensure the highest possible accuracy. We process data from different forms, standardize it and also upload it directly into your database, delivering data in real-time. Our flexible solutions allow us to handle urgent requests, offer short cycle times, and daily data entry services for ongoing business requirements.
Realizing the importance of the task that we have been with, we hold accuracy and accountability, as our guiding standards, minimizing costly errors in sample processing.
The ARDEM Advantage
Advanced Healthcare Outsourcing
Outsourcing your healthcare services is not something that can be done on the spur of moment. You need to find a trusted partner who takes the utmost care with regards to the accuracy of data as small errors that are easily overlooked in other industries can have serious complications in healthcare.
Did you know even a tiny error of just one digit or letter in medical coding can cause an entire filing to be rejected?
That’s exactly why ARDEM employs the perfect blend of human supervision and intelligent automation to ensure that all healthcare data we process is of the highest quality and accuracy.
We assimilate your data, be it in any format, physical or digital and extract, segregate and process it as per your requirements. We also employ double-key data entry to ensure high-quality data of the highest possible accuracy. We build long-partnerships for long-term success and benefits, offering you reduced costs, increased accuracy, and efficiency along with shorter cycle times.
We also constantly improve and optimize our robust processes to eliminate errors as we are cognizant of the fact that healthcare is one of the few fields where an absent-minded error can mean the difference between life and death.
Healthcare Claims Processing
As a healthcare provider, you are providing an essential service but at the end of the day, you do need to be paid for your services. This makes claims processing an integral part of the healthcare business.
However, filing your claims with Medicaid or Medicare is not as simple as it sounds, between various federal and state government regulations, the healthcare industry is one of the most carefully supervised industries in the US.
On top of that, claims processing billing for Medicaid claims can be trickier than those filed under Medicare because Medicaid claims must adhere to both federal and state guidelines and Medicaid programs differ from state to state.
At Ardem, we do our best to eliminate or minimize errors and uphold all Medicare and Medicaid compliance requirements, fully cognizant of the fact that healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in the US with strict guidelines.
Additionally, apart from the guidelines you also need to be aware of the deadlines as according to PracticeSuit, all Medicare claims must be submitted within 12 months after a hospital or practice provides care to the eligible patient.
However, with ARDEM as your partner, you will never have to swallow the bitter pill of missed deadlines again. We enter, process and deliver your data in a faster and efficient manner, even processing data from your day-to-day activities in real-time.
100% Patient Data Security
The biggest threat faced by hospitals and healthcare providers while outsourcing is that of a data breach that looms on the horizon like a malignant tumor.
ARDEM lets you put these fears to rest with a string of strict security measures: we are HIPAA and GDPR compliant and have our VPNs, SSLs, encryption protocols, and security protocols in place.
On top of all these protocols, we are also extremely careful about how we expose your data while processing and to whom. Access to sensitive data is strictly on a need-to-know basis, and we further ensure that your data cannot be moved, edited, or seen by all.
So, now all you and your staff need to do is focus on helping your patients get better.
Digital Transformation of Medical Records
Digitizing records is no longer a luxury in the age of cloud-based computing, rather it has become a necessity.
ARDEM offers you considerable expertise in the process of digitizing and archiving your medical records, as we have a 10-year-long, ongoing partnership with a National Biomedical and Public Health research agency. We developed a complete solution to extract, process and digitize data from over a century’s worth of medical records for the agency and our quality of work spoke for itself, leading to a long and sustainable partnership.
With our proprietary ARDEM Data Capture and ARDEM Automation technologies we build customized and cost-effective solutions for digitizing and maintaining your records. Outsourcing healthcare services has never been this easy or simple.
Life Services Outsourcing
At ARDEM, we also offer a variety of outsourcing services to medical and health research organizations and the pharmaceutical industry.
If you are looking for a reliable partner to accurately enter, process and store your research data, then search no more as you have found your perfect partner in ARDEM.
Healthcare Survey Processing
Market surveys are a staple feature in any growing business and the healthcare industry is no different. A well-conducted survey can help you fathom areas of improvement and growth based on reliable feedback from your customers.
At ARDEM, we deploy the perfect balance of machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a multi-faceted solution for healthcare survey processing.
So, when it comes to healthcare claims processing and management, you won’t find a better long-term partner than ARDEM. Our advanced document scanning and processing services can take on the lion’s share of healthcare claims and billing needs, leaving your staff free to focus on key healthcare services. The future of outsourcing healthcare services looks bright and poised for success.
On our part, we promise to carry out all our operations with due diligence to help you deliver superior healthcare.