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Jamestown Regional Medical Center (JRMC) is a 25-bed critical access hospital serving the south central region of North Dakota.

Challenge

Following the implementation of a new health information system, JRMC sought to increase financial stability and sustain growth, while maintaining the highest quality care. Leadership also wanted to improve JRMC’s operating margin and cash on hand to ensure its ability to remain financially independent for years to come.

Approach

Working collaboratively: Huron rapidly identified and implemented operational improvement initiatives in revenue cycle, labor and non-labor areas. Huron’s Community Hospital Team listened carefully and tailored their solutions to match JRMC’s size and needs, helping to significantly improve financial performance.

The engagement resulted in $2.35 million in recurring benefit, while increasing safety, access, and patient satisfaction.

Revenue Cycle: The engagement significantly reduced unbilled accounts and A/R days while improving case factor metrics. Huron helped restructure departments to improve productivity and efficiency, while aligning priorities to maximize cash collections and minimize bad debt and write-offs. JRMC and Huron also improved patient financial responsibility processes and scope, leading to increased collections of approximately 1 percent of net patient revenue.

Labor: Huron established department-specific productivity standards, including staffing to demand analysis and shift management tools, to show how labor expenses aligned with volume. The engagement team also implemented a productivity reporting tool for all departments to monitor performance and drive accountability. These and other improvements led to $700,250 in recurring labor savings.

Non-Labor: The Huron engagement identified savings and revenue generation opportunities in IT, pharmacy, finance, laboratory and other departments. In addition, Huron trained management to develop business cases through data analysis, stakeholder education and scenario planning. The team also collaboratively developed a competitive bid RFP process. Non-labor measures generated $461,440 in recurring benefit.

Patient Safety, Access, and Satisfaction: To increase safety, Huron helped JRMC reengineer the environmental services workflow, ensuring proper patient room sanitation. The engagement also reduced the risk of transfusion-related reactions. Efficiencies in scheduling reduced patient wait times for mammogram appointments from three months to less than two weeks.

By enhancing the existing point-of-service program and incorporating collections conversations into an expanded pre-registration process, JRMC was able to help patients understand and plan for their financial responsibilities. Patient feedback has been very positive.