Intermountain Healthcare

Intermountain Healthcare includes 22 hospitals and about 1,400 employed physicians at more than 185 clinics. They are widely recognized as a leader in clinical quality improvement and in efficient healthcare delivery.

Intermountain Healthcare converted to an integrated electronic health record, practice management, and revenue cycle system in their North Region, consisting of four hospitals and numerous clinics. Post conversion, leadership sought to accelerate cash recovery, reduce A/R days, and improve overall operational efficiency by optimizing workflow.

Huron collaborated with Intermountain leadership and staff across multiple hospitals to optimize workflows, prioritize and manage technical issues, and increase productivity and accountability. The engagement, which focused on Intermountain’s North Region facilities, significantly increased cash factor percentages while decreasing A/R days and work-in-process days.

Increasing accountability and performance: Huron worked with Intermountain to establish a denials taskforce addressing the root cause of denials and write-off adjustments. The team created accountability structures and increased each department’s ability to measure the results of their efforts. The engagement also implemented refreshed productivity guidelines, quality standards, and tracking measures. Improved productivity increased Patient Account Services touches from 1,780 to 3,847 per week.

Streamlining workflows and processes: As Intermountain combined and changed systems, technical flows were disrupted, leading to inefficiencies. Huron assisted with reconciliation efforts to identify and resolve affected populations so that accounts reached the right staff member at the right time. Huron also instituted a targeted review of aged accounts to identify workflow gaps, training opportunities, and payer issues. In addition, the engagement assisted with the effort to consolidate acute and medical group cash posting functions into a single team.

Huron’s emphasis on workflow optimization improved overall efficiency and helped reduce billing work-in-process by over four A/R days in less than six months.

Enhancing technology: Huron helped leadership quantify the dollar or FTE impact of technical challenges and potential optimizations, allowing performance priorities to be set across the many teams involved with resolving technical tickets and improving workflows. To ensure sustainability, Huron provided coaching on appropriate checkpoints, elevations, and communications. Improved management and prioritization of technical system opportunities and challenges nearly tripled the technical ticket closure rates over a five-month period.