Determine how you can reevaluate your revenue integrity program

Editor’s note: Caroline Znaniec, MBA, MS-HCA, revenue cycle practice leader at Protiviti’s healthcare, will present “Optimizing Your Revenue Integrity Program: Objectives, Leadership, and Skill Sets” on Day 1, and “Optimizing Your Revenue Integrity Program: Analytics, KPIs, and Performance Metrics” on Day 2 of the Revenue Integrity Symposium, which takes place September 19-20 at the Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak. Znaniec has extensive professional consulting and industry experience in healthcare. She works with various healthcare provider organizations, including hospitals, health systems, home care, physician specialty groups and clinics, freestanding ambulatory care providers, payers, private equity groups, and investors.

NAHRI: What’s the biggest challenge in revenue integrity right now? How does your session help tackle this?
Znaniec: Healthcare organizations of all sizes are struggling to maintain pace with regulatory changes, staffing constraints, and budgetary pressures across the revenue cycle. Efforts to focus on revenue integrity have become fragmented and reactive. My sessions with Christian will provide guidance to healthcare organizations on how to step back and re-assess their revenue integrity programs. We will share strategies around defining program objectives, considerations for right-size staffing, key performance indicators, and monitoring program performance. We will provide our experiences working with organizations of all sizes, capabilities, and budgets, further identifying that there is not a one size fits all program.

NAHRI: What piece of advice do you like to give people about revenue integrity?
Znaniec: The best advice I have for those in revenue integrity is to try not to do everything for everyone. Get to know your revenue cycle counterparts, appreciate the interdependencies, define your roles and accountabilities, and trust the process. Too often, revenue integrity professionals take on work that ultimately results in the development of manual and reactive tasks. Doing so distracts the program staff from the original objectives set forth- objectives that focus on process improvement to maintain and optimize revenues. The process cannot be rectified if the time and resources are not focused on correcting the root cause.

NAHRI: What are you most excited about with this year’s conference?
Znaniec: I am most excited to present this year and expand upon NAHRI’s published recommended job descriptions and staffing algorithm. Christian and I, along with other Board Members' feedback, authored the recommendations and welcome the opportunity to provide background and speak with attendees.