Healthcare IT Investment Places More Financial Pressure On Smaller Organizations

Hospitals are struggling to be financially stable, as informational technology investments require more resources than CFOs expected. Smaller healthcare systems especially struggle to stay afloat. Meanwhile, larger health care systems are able to handle the high costs of medical record systems and maintain other investments in financial software, patient care technologies and capital improvements.

Many of the smaller organizations are postponing purchases of new revenue cycle management (process that manages claims processing, payment and revenue generation) until 2016.

Black Book, a market research company, surveyed finance employees at over 590 hospital organizations about healthcare finance trends. They found a major trend is bad debt from outstanding patient balances. Financial managers claim they need software that can make patient coverage estimations through verification of insurance, benefits, out-of-pocket costs, and real-time pricing.

Many CFOs at struggling hospitals told Black Book that the industry trend to hire CEOs from outside healthcare threaten their jobs. Black Book’s Doug Brown claims, “failing RCM systems will close marginally performing hospitals for good and will get CFOs fired.”

Nonetheless, Zirmed was rated first overall (for large hospitals and academic medical centers over 250 beds) for best revenue cycle management.

Summary by MedicalGroups.com

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