Having a competent and skilled team of healthcare professionals is key to quality patient care and in the long run, it can guarantee business’s success. According to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), a great team of healthcare specialists each play an important role in patient treatment. With varying skills and experiences, they collaborate and coordinate for the common purpose of meeting patient needs. And to ensure reaching the goals of your organization, we listed ways to amp up your healthcare team.

Top 3 Methods:

It is important to constantly introduce improvements to your healthcare team to certify the quality and efficiency in the service that you provide. To help you out, here are some practical ways to make your healthcare team more effective:

1. Encourage trust and collaboration

In general, teamwork is what makes a team great. Effective teamwork, as stated in the aforementioned NAM report, depends on the members’ ability to trust one another and communicate a mistake, question, or suggestion without apprehensions. It allows them to learn together and collaborate regardless of positions and status.

In healthcare, teamwork is crucial for patient safety in terms of minimizing errors that may result from miscommunication and misunderstanding as well as reducing factors that may lead to burnout in the workplace. Bringing a group of multidisciplinary healthcare professionals together is indeed challenging. With this, you can introduce initiatives that can strengthen teamwork within your team such as team-building exercises where they can feel more engaged and connected to their place of work, and regular huddles where the teams can briefly discuss concerns and updates for each department, which can increase awareness and encourage better communication.

2. Incorporate telehealth in your operations

Nowadays, the power of technology has permeated every industry. For medicine and healthcare, telehealth is a welcomed innovation that entails countless benefits for patients, healthcare providers and your business.

By integrating digital and communication technologies such as computers and mobile devices, it makes healthcare services remotely accessible to patients and most importantly the medical professionals. In effect, it improves the healthcare delivery system, allowing your team to manage diagnosis, treatment, charting and communicating to the patient and with each other more efficiently.

Incorporating telehealth in your operations is one sure step to enhance your healthcare team in such a way where they can expand their workload and avoid overworking themselves since through virtual visits and online consultations, making their schedules more flexible. In return, as your team accepts more patients and renders more services, you can expect a growth in revenue in your business.

There are still a plethora of benefits that telehealth can provide your business ranging from increased patient satisfaction and engagement to creation of a digital portal for your patients. To experience these, you may want to consider the option of adding an outsourced telehealth support in your team today.

3. Know the importance of an RCM team for your business

When it comes to the business side of healthcare, a highly skilled revenue cycle management (RCM) team is what you need for success. This group of people composed of medical coders, billers, and other specialists handles important transactions such as patient scheduling and registration, insurance eligibility verification, medical coding, claims submission, claims management, payment collection and reporting.

Just like in telehealth services, outsourcing a dedicated RCM team can do wonders for the improvement of your overall healthcare team. For one, it allows the rest of your staff to focus more on caring for patients as they do not need to handle the time-consuming administrative tasks and paperwork anymore.

You can also expect an increase in care efficiency and enhanced patient experience when partnering with the right outsourcing company because of their access to certified and high-performing RCM experts. Together with the use of technology, this can significantly reduce standard billing errors such as incorrect name of the patient and wrong CPT codes, which can elevate your healthcare facility’s reputation and help you deliver the best service to your patients.

Virtual RCM team is also key to increased revenues linked to accurate coding and billing rules and timely reimbursements, and reduced operating costs as your outsourcing partner can look for a team of highly trained and available experts for a fraction of your local cost.

How build a great team 

Find a trusted healthcare outsourcing partner.

The right partner can help you build a great and dedicated healthcare team composed of experts for your unique telehealth, RCM and other healthcare needs. It can assure you of minimal denial and turnaround time for your claims while optimizing reimbursement. There is also no need to worry about spending so much on telehealth equipment and training staff as your outsourcing partner can streamline and make it more affordable for you with a 70% savings on operational cost.

When it comes to healthcare, the right outsourcing partner is ISO 27001:2013 and ISO 9001:2015 certified and HIPAA- and GDPR-compliant because they understand the importance of securing your company and patient’s data.

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize your full potential.

We can build you a great, high-performing Healthcare team composed of:

• Medical Coders
• Medical Billers
• Patient Concierge
• Clinical Abstractors
• Patient Concierge
• Medical Review Specialists
• Care Navigators
• Outbound/Inbound Collections
• Other RCM Teams
• Other Healthcare Support

Let’s work together to build a great Healthcare Team

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.

Without a doubt, a team of skilled RCM experts expand growth significantly.

And building a great RCM is every healthcare business’s goal. Employing the right team makes your organization successful. That’s why, it is imperative that you know the top 3 RCM teams to build for your company.

Importance of Creating the Right RCM Team 

One of the main goals of any healthcare business is having the right team in place to function at peak performance. You must include experts and specialists in various disciplines within the Revenue Cycle. In this article, you will not only know what teams to build but the skills to look for.

Assembling RCM experts is never easy. However, with the right outsourcing specialist you can be confident that you are getting the absolute best. The goal is always to improve the services offered to your patients and ensure that your medical team is not overworked. By recruiting a great RCM team, healthcare becomes more efficient and effective.

The top three positions for your RCM team are: 

1. Medical coders

Medical coders are an important member of the RCM team because they are the backbone of converting patient’s records as readable medical codes for different healthcare personnel. With medical coding, modern healthcare care becomes connected.

With accurate coding, medical billers and insurance companies can work together to secure fast billing processing. Medical coding serves to classify all medical procedures and treatments in easy-to-understand codes that enables all healthcare professionals to comprehend the medical journey of a patient. Also, medical billing relies on medical codes to ensure that all healthcare providers are paid for their services and all claims are handled smoothly and efficiently for patients. 

Primary skill to look for:

Analytical and evaluation skills

Medical coders review patient records and identify different illnesses, symptoms, diagnoses, procedures and treatments and assign specific codes to each element. It is then expected for them to have good analytical and evaluation skills because there are illnesses and treatment that may appear similar yet are categorized differently.

Also, since coders translate medical documentation into a uniform set of codes, this makes them the backbone of cataloging patient information essential for tracking patient outcomes, organizing clinical databases, and maintaining population health statistics and accurate billing. Simply put, wrong coding merits wrong billing.

2. Medical billers

Another team to add in your RCM are medical billers. It is probably one of the most critical components of any healthcare business practice because they secure revenue. A team of skilled medical billers is responsible for submitting medical claims to insurance companies which is critical for the financial cycle of your company.

Medical builders have specialized knowledge on payments, bill adjustments, claim follow-up, claim denial resolution, and collections management. All of these components must be managed correctly to guarantee revenue flow.

Primary skill to look for:

Attention to detail

Medical billers work with vast information and convert them into claims to submit to insurance companies. Therefore, they need to have precise attention to details to make sure that your healthcare business is compensated properly, the patient is billed correctly, and timely payments are made.

Although the medical biller is not directly interacting with the patient and involved with care, he or she should have a good understanding of medical terminology to be able to discuss medical bills with both insurance carriers proper billing is accounted for.  Intricate attention to details allow them to identify codes properly and eliminate any billing errors.

3. Patient Concierge

This team enables patients to easily inquire about a doctor’s schedule, the type of tests they need to submit before a consultation or inquire about the lab test schedule and corresponding fees. They also maintain quality patient experience while improving patient satisfaction by assisting patients during their check-in processes and answering any inquiries or concerns the patient might have about their health concerns. They are the first “touch” in a healthcare provider’s facility, so even by speaking over the phone, they already must show empathy and genuine care.

They also reduce long wait time by managing calls, appointment-setting, and other administrative patient needs. In fact, a survey talks about how 90% of patients are satisfied with their care through patient concierge, and around 97% mentioned that the healthcare provider they are in contact with takes a personal interest in their health than those in a traditional clinical setup.

Primary skill to look for:

Communication Skills

In the healthcare industry, effective communication is a must. However, a patient concierge specialist should have the ability to work with complex information such as medical diagnosis, assessment and proper charting to communicate the patient’s concerns accordingly and refer them to the right healthcare specialist.

All information must be communicated accurately and in a truly clear and precise language. In addition, they need to convey the proper message to different healthcare staff and provide accurate data and analysis so patient’s concerns are understood and communicated precisely. Ideal communication involves not only speaking but also the ability to listen to the patient with their concerns. If the patient feels that their needs are promptly heard and addressed, this can result in high patient satisfaction.

Building Top RCM Teams

Building the right team creates a well-oiled RCM process. And turning to a trusted outsourcing company to help you build this team gives you access to a world-class pool of talents all the while saving up to 70% operational cost without compromising quality of work and maintaining operational excellence.

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize its full potential.

Infinit-O Key Benefits:

We can build you a great, high-performing RCM team composed of:

• Medical Coders
• Medical Billers
• Patient Concierge
• Clinical Abstractors
• Patient Concierge
• Medical Review Specialists
• Care Navigators
• Outbound/Inbound Collections
• Other RCM Teams
• Other Healthcare Support

Let’s work together to build a great  RCM Team.

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.

No matter how skilled and efficient experts are with their jobs, healthcare workers are still humans who get tired and burned out at the end of the day. Stress and lack of rest can affect their performance and morale in the workplace resulting in low productivity, decreased patient satisfaction, and replacement costs. All of these can hurt your business if gone unaddressed.

The blog provides practical tips on how to avoid burnout and healthcare fatigue.

Why are they exhausted?

To alleviate this problem, you need to first determine the factors that make your healthcare team exhausted to know what areas need to be improved on and to better support your workers. Generally, the high workloads in healthcare is one of the main reasons why health workers are tired. In a study on the relationship of workload, burnout, and job control, it is found that “an increase in the workload was significantly associated with higher job exhaustion.”

A recent report from the CIPD and Simplyhealth also listed workloads as one of the top three causes of stress-related absence in the workplace together with management style and relationships at work.

High workloads can be attributed to the shortage of trained staff due to the unequal demand and supply for different healthcare professionals nowadays, and the multifunctional nature of healthcare professionals which allows them to take on several roles within their practice, adding to their workload and even leading them to compromising other core responsibilities.

With more tasks on their plate, healthcare professionals resort to extended working hours, missing out on adequate rest and work-life balance. Eventually, this will lead not only to exhaustion but to low morale among the employees as well.

What can you do about it?

Just like any other workplace, communication is important in healthcare. Assure your employees that you are open to listen to them when it comes to issues and concerns in the workplace. By doing this, you can also have an insight on things you need to look into when it comes to employee management and such. Recognizing achievements and rewarding good performance are also things you can do to make them feel appreciated for their efforts and will most likely drive them to do their best at work.

More importantly, you need to find ways to effectively manage the workload in your healthcare business so that you avoid getting your staff overworked. These two sure fire ways can be the solution you need:

1. Employing telehealth in your operations

The field of telehealth empowers how patients, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals experience healthcare. Regardless of the service needed—whether a doctor’s consultation or prescription—patients conveniently access these through smart devices such as laptops and smartphones. The physical distance is crossed with the quick, real-time access of a virtual one.

Among its many benefits is the flexibility in scheduling, which helps in workload management. Since telehealth can be used virtually anywhere and anytime, healthcare professionals have more freedom in their schedule and can balance their workload for the week, for example, by offering extended hours or even weekend operations without requiring the physical office to be staffed. With this set-up, work-life balance among workers can also be attained or improved.

You can look into expanding your healthcare staff by employing RCM experts as part of your Telehealth operations. Outsourcing a great RCM team can do wonders for your business. It allows you to focus more on caring for patients, increases revenues, and is cost-efficient. More importantly, it lightens the load of administrative tasks which contributes to managing the overall workload in your healthcare facility.

2. Hiring back-up support

When all else fails, it’s never wrong to add more people to your team if it means getting the job done without sacrificing the well-being of your employees and patients. Outsourcing your healthcare workers and even telemedicine services as back-up support is one the best ways to manage workloads without breaking the bank when compared to simply hiring staff members.

Through a trusted healthcare solutions partner, you would be able to build a dedicated team of well-trained healthcare practitioners & RCM professionals specifically designed for your unique needs. Your company can also save up to 70% on operation costs employing an outsourced team and guarantee excellent work quality and performance on the job.

The right partner also has speed to market hiring process of 30 to 45 days of hiring to onboarding, your hospital staff can focus on their core function to provide care and treatment while your outsourced back up support team takes on operational responsibilities.

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize your full potential.

Infinit-O Key Benefits:

We can build you a great, high-performing RCM team composed of:

• Medical Coders
• Medical Billers
• Clinical Abstractors
• Patient Concierge
• Medical Review Specialists
• Care Navigators
• Outbound/Inbound Collections
• Other RCM Teams
• Other Healthcare Support

Let’s work together to build a great, high-performing RCM Team

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.

Healthcare organizations are feeling the heat to maintain all aspects of their health informatics service while still functioning on a tight budget. With the increase of healthcare demand due to the pandemic, health informatics through telehealth services are now being more utilized.

Hence, outsourcing health informatics has become quite common practice due to the cost savings and enormous benefits of welcoming skilled and dynamic professionals to an HC team. In this article, we will explore the leading 4 ways that outsourcing health informatics is transforming healthcare businesses. 

The Popularity of Outsourcing Health Informatics 

A recent Black Book poll looked at 1,600 hospital executives and 807 CIOs to find that about 34% of the organizations were expected to dramatically increase their level of HI outsourcing over the next two years. The poll also revealed that a dramatic 58% planned to outsource for experts with health informatics certifications to bring in new skills and value so they can stay on top. Without a doubt, welcoming expert health informatics personnel onto the team provides optimum technology resource skills and improved patient outcomes. 

Advantages of Outsourcing Health Informatics 

Clearly, cost reduction, access to the latest technology, data security, patient empowerment, improved communication/information exchange, and access to specialized, skilled professionals are just a few of the advantages of outsourcing health informatics.

Any healthcare business or practice wants their healthcare team to have quick access to all patient history, clinical notes, lab results, medications, x-rays, and more. In addition, they can quickly collaborate with each other from one convenient platform. Patient satisfaction is also crucial, especially since the healthcare industry has become so competitive. Without a doubt, patients benefit from better outcomes and are also able to have full access to their health records, so the entire experience is vastly improved on all fronts.

1.    Substantial Savings by Outsourcing 

So you got a great EHR system. Now you need a great team to operate and utilize the EHR, right? You have two choices, one is in-source with high price talent and the other is to outsource and save 70% with the same talent. 

All companies want to save money and stay within budget.  In fact, in some areas of the United States, the high-cost labor involved in bringing in in-house seasoned individuals to maintain critical applications is extreme and out of the budget of most businesses. Outsourcing is the perfect affordable solution to save up to 70% on operational cost and still work with seasoned professionals. 

Cost Savings Calculator

The cost of healthcare continues to go up every year. With inefficient information sharing and errors continuing to throw a wrench in the system, HC businesses must step back to figure out ways to cut cost while still maintaining a high level of care and service. Trying to fall within or under budget is a nightmare in many cases. However, outsourcing has become a cost-effective way to stay on top of technology and offer superior communication for everyone involved. 

2.             24/7 Operations 

A great outsourcing partner operates 24/7/365. This ensures that more work is being completed as compared to a regular 9 hour shift in-house staff. 

Outsourcing health informatics welcomes in the creme de la creme of skilled professionals who can seamlessly perform RCM related tasks and can support cutthroat HI softwares and apps. They work round the clock like any other healthcare professionals with a similar 24/7 shift in a hospital. This means that charts are coded almost real time and other RCM functions are completed promptly.

3.             Staying on Top with Technology

The value of health informatics lets a hospital or care center businesses stay on top of technological advances without breaking the bank. With the right outsourcing company, they will comply with the necessary software updates you need for your company. 

In many cases, it is simply impossible for the HI team to have the skill and experts needed to handle all the various software and EHR applications. However, the right outsourcing partners can build a great HI team with required expertise and competencies that can stay up to date with the latest HI technologies. They can also ensure that the tools used by the HI team are streamlined with your company’s required software updates and versions.

4.             Enhanced Security 

In addition, with the advances in technology come vulnerabilities that are a significant threat. A healthcare facility can easily become the victim of a full-scale cyberattack. In 2017, McAfee reported that the healthcare industry was the number one most attacked realm due to an increase of malware by 67%.  Clearly, the importance of protecting vital systems and data from a hacking attack cannot be overlooked. Thankfully, outsourcing helps substantially by avoiding such missteps and being ready to instigate innovating emergency protection measures when necessary if a security breach should occur. 

Data confidentiality has never been more important for patient privacy. Medical professionals have been turning to blockchain technology and methods of data encryption to stop data breaches and compromised files. Health informatics stays compliant with health security rules, policies and  all the other parameters needed to maintain patient privacy such as HIPAA and DPA2012 compliant.

Lastly, Always seek an outsourcing company that offers state-of-the-art information security to ensure that all data and patient information stays confidential and safe. 

To Sum It Up

The contribution of health informatics in healthcare is substantial and essential. Therefore, finding the right outsourcing partner for your business is crucial to reach your company’s growth and success. They can build you a great team of HI experts with access to an impressive pool of talent through their A+ recruitment team and speed to market hiring process of 30-45 days time period of hiring to on-boarding, all the while allowing you to save up to 70% on operation cost. The right partner will take care of complemental operational tasks while you focus on achieving your business goals.

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize your full potential.

Below are some examples of Health Informatics experts that we can recruit to build a team just for you:

• Clinical Data Processor
• Nurse Informatics
• Clinical Data Analysts
• EHR Onboarding Specialists
• EHR Account Managers
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Keepers
• Medical Coders
• Medical Billers
• Clinical Abstractors
• Patient Concierge
• Medical Review Specialists
• IT consultant specializing in HI
• Other Healthcare roles

Let’s work together to build a great, high-performing Healthcare Team

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.

Medical coders play an important role in a healthcare business as they are involved in revenue cycle management. Specifically, they are tasked to translate patients’ medical reports that are utilized by insurance companies to reimburse the provider. With a role as crucial as this, it is a must to hire medical coders possessing the adequate credentials to do their jobs effectively.

The Edge of Skills and Certifications

Education and certification are among the first things you should look for in an applicant. But nowadays, a college diploma or anything of the same regard may not be enough. They should also have at least six-month training experience or even better, a certification from accredited organizations like the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) or the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

When it comes to skills, on the other hand, the following are what your applicants should possess to ensure they can perform well on the job:

5 Top Skills of a Medical Coder

1. Attention to detail

Since they will be working mainly in assigning alphanumeric codes to different medical procedures, diagnoses, and medications, having a strong attention to detail is a valuable skill a medical coder should have. A coder who is detail-oriented can easily identify the smallest differences between codes and will not be mixing them up, which if happens, is very dangerous to the patient.

Coders should also be able to handle various paperworks and documents without sacrificing quality.

2. Knowledge and understanding of medical terminologies

Medical coding is not just a clerical job. It also requires coders to have extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology, disease processes, pharmacology, the different classification systems, and more to be able to properly assign diagnostic and procedural codes to terminologies.

At the same time, they need to have expertise in various code sets for diseases and other medical ailments like the ICD-10. Each disease has its own unique ICD-10 code, and the codes are updated from time to time. As a result, medical coders need to keep abreast of the large number of current codes, and they need to be aware of any changes made.

3. Computer literacy

To make coding more accurate and faster, medical coders now use coding software programs like Epic, Centricity, AdvancedMD, Homecare, Homebase, DrChrono, Nextivity and others to input correct procedure and diagnosis codes. Most healthcare facilities nowadays also have digital databases that medical coders should know how to navigate.

Not only do medical coders need to be familiarized with these programs, they must also be excellent in typing, preferably with 10-key speed and accuracy.

4. Good communication and interpersonal skills

Since medical coders don’t often interact with other healthcare staff face-to-face, they need to have effective english communication skills and interpersonal skills to be able to communicate well with doctors, nurses, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals, and discuss patient records effectively even through other channels.

This is important to assure that vital information doesn’t get lost in translation, may it be verbal,  written or computer-mediated.

5. Ability to work independently

The nature of the job for medical coders does not require them to be always under close supervision of a manager. This is why they need to have the focus and drive to finish tasks on schedule even with the presence of distractions in the environment. Even without constant external feedback, they should maintain productivity and good performance during work hours.

By outsourcing this function with the right partner you’ll be able to build the right team of medical coders that can work with minimal supervision.

Building a Great Team

Not all medical coders are the same so it’s very important to carefully select those who have the right credentials and skills for the job. By doing this, you are assured of accurate reimbursements and documentation of patient care history. Incorrect coding can not only harm your business but patients’ lives as well.

Medical coding is a high priced job in most markets. In fact, according to data from the American Academy of Professional Coders, the average salary in the US of a medical coder is $54,890, 2019. 

But the right outsourcing partner with an excellent recruitment team will have access to world-class talents, increasing your chances of building a great medical coding team.

A trusted healthcare outsourcing partner can help you build a dedicated RCM team that can assure you of minimal denial and turnaround time for your claims while optimizing reimbursement. When it comes to healthcare, finding the right outsourcing partner can assist you whether they be growth, better productivity or simply bottom-line cost savings of up to 70%. ISO-certified, HIPAA- and GDPR-compliant are also crucial things to consider for a great partnership to secure your company and patient’s data.

Partnership with Infinit-O

Infinit-O’s mission is to create endless opportunities for your company to realize your full potential.

Infinit-O Key Benefits:

Below are some of the experts we can gather for the unique RCM and healthcare needs:

• Medical Coders
• Medical Billers
• Clinical Abstractors
• Patient Concierge
• Medical Review Specialists
• Care Navigators
• Outbound/Inbound Collections
• Other RCM Teams
• Other Healthcare Support

Let’s work together to build a great, high-performing RCM Team

Start small. Exceed expectations. Think infinitely. Think Infinit-O.