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Aria Health and Huron worked together to implement operational and financial solutions, along with change management efforts, to create sustainable improvements and a lasting culture change.

Challenge

Aria Health was experiencing operational and financial challenges. A rapidly changing healthcare environment coupled with acquisition-led growth in Aria’s physician services practice created a burning platform for revenue cycle optimization. Aria needed to integrate the new physician practices and make sustainable improvements across the revenue cycle.

The Huron engagement is essential to our ongoing success at Aria. The project team successfully implemented millions in sustainable improvements and their highly effective change management effort created real and lasting culture change. It’s been an extremely valuable partnership.”

Approach

Huron set Aria on a path of operational and financial excellence with a comprehensive net revenue recovery solution in the hospital and physician services spaces. The engagement delivered $30.8 million in recurring annual benefit through improvements to revenue cycle operations, clinical documentation, strategic pricing and managed care contracting.

Speaking about the engagement, Aria Health Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Kinslow said, “The Huron engagement is essential to our ongoing success at Aria. The project team successfully implemented millions in sustainable improvements and their highly effective change management effort created real and lasting culture change. It’s been an extremely valuable partnership.”

Increasing revenue cycle productivity. Huron implemented new work drivers to effectively manage and consolidate tasks, establish priorities and empower staff to work proactively. New processes, tools and training drove sustainable culture change and created a new level of ownership and accountability. Streamlined interdepartmental communication and access to actionable data helped address delays and backlogs.

Increasing collections. By updating collection practices and reporting at the physician services locations, Huron helped Aria achieve a 50 percent increase in weekly total point of service collections. The implementation of a weekly dashboard provided increased visibility around point of service collections.

Enhancing transparency. Huron’s reporting solutions enhanced management reports, brought transparency to backlogs and helped identify revenue leakage. These tools, along with the implementation of a new revenue cycle accountability structure, enabled managers to identify and resolve issues while monitoring progress against goals.

Driving additional savings. The engagement addressed a number of additional cost savings and revenue improvement opportunities. Huron supported the build and design of a new EHR, provided clinical documentation improvement training, advised on cost savings opportunities for vendor contracts and improved vendor accountability through new processes such as a vendor scorecard.

Aria Health is the largest healthcare provider in Northeast Philadelphia and Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The system includes three community hospitals and a network of outpatient centers and primary care physicians.