TransUnion?s Enhanced Revenue Manager Improves Hospital Productivity

TransUnion announced a newly enhanced version of its patented healthcare revenue cycle workflow and financial analytics product suite – Revenue Manager SM – at the HFMA’s Annual National Institute (ANI) Healthcare Financing Conference. Revenue Manager is an ASP-based technology platform that determines in real time, patient eligibility for financial assistance at the time of registration.

Additionally, Revenue Manager assists healthcare providers in verifying patient identity to improve patient safety from potential identity theft, qualifies patient eligibility for financial assistance or insurance benefits at time of service, helps in collecting payments through prioritizing accounts by a patient’s ability to pay and provides fact-based payment planning.

“With recent studies showing a 60 percent surge in the underinsured to 25 million in the past five years, hospitals need solutions such as Revenue Manager to better assess a patient’s financial options for their portion of hospital costs,” said Rod Bazzani, executive vice president of healthcare for TransUnion. “TransUnion’s patented healthcare financing methodology also improves patient ID verification by cutting application time while increasing hospital staff efficiencies by streamlining back-end collection processes.”

The newly enhanced Revenue Manager expands benchmark reporting capabilities on staff productivity, charity reporting for IRS Form 990 Schedule H and patient metrics. It also includes a comprehensive family-based decisioning tool, auto-assignment of patient files based on daily staffing and census needs, and a robust workflow tool to better assist hospital management and staff with follow up task reminders.

Improved efficiencies will be one result of the platform’s new auto assignment functionality, which assigns patient files to the appropriate hospital staff at the time of service. This is based on the hospital’s specific workflow guidelines which can be easily modified to support daily staffing changes.

Also, an improved work list tool automates previously manual processes such as following up with certain patients or providing reminders about other revenue related tasks. Additionally, hospital management will be able to pull reports that measure staff productivity, such as highlighting the number of files employees review throughout a day.

In addition to the efficiencies gained, several enhancements were made in the financial assistance qualifying modules. The household view feature enables hospital administrators to assess an entire family’s eligibility for a variety of financial assistance programs concurrently. The platform also ranks the eligible programs for each patient according to maximum health benefits available.

“We are particularly excited about the family grouping enhancements because Revenue Manager now makes it easier for hospitals to automatically qualify all eligible family members for specific programs,” said Marty Callahan, vice president of Healthcare Solutions for TransUnion. “For instance, if a mother comes to an emergency room for care, a hospital may also qualify her entire family for assistance through the quick Revenue Manager-led interview process. Though the hospital is only treating one person, the automated qualifying process allows them to assist other family members in need.”

Another major Revenue Manager enhancement is expanded reporting capabilities, which now includes more than 20 standard reports that report at the department, staff, and patient levels. The reports cover key performance metrics such as a hospital’s own charity program approvals, public assistance program enrollments, staff productivity and collection estimates. Custom reports can be easily set up to tailor to a hospital’s specific recurring reporting needs.

“The expanded reporting capability is particularly beneficial because hospitals receive thousands of repeat visitors each year. For instance, in one large Southwestern hospital utilizing TransUnion’s healthcare offerings, self-pay patients accounted for approximately 154,000 annual registrations and more than 86,000 of those registrations were repeat visitors,” added Callahan.

Revenue Manager was created based on a business method patent (United States Patent No. 7,333,937) granted in February 2008. The patent utilizes healthcare financial aid information associated with federal, state, and local assistance plans to help appropriately determine both patient eligibility for assistance and patient responsibility for costs related to medical treatment.

The patented technology instantaneously performs calculations based on patient information and eligibility requirements to pre-qualify applicants and their family members for optimal financial assistance programs. Patient demographic information is pre-populated on all enrollment forms; ready for immediate printing, signature and submission.

TransUnion Revenue Manager is available to healthcare organizations of all sizes in the United States. For more information, stop by Booth #1138 at the HFMA’s Annual National Institute (ANI) Healthcare Financing Conference, contact your local TransUnion sales representative or visit the company’s Web site at www.transunion.com/healthcare.

As a global leader in credit and information management, TransUnion creates advantages for millions of people around the world by gathering, analyzing and delivering information. For businesses, TransUnion helps improve efficiency, manage risk, reduce costs and increase revenue by delivering comprehensive data and advanced analytics and decisioning. For consumers, TransUnion provides the tools, resources and education to help manage their credit health and achieve their financial goals. Through these and other efforts, TransUnion is working to build stronger economies worldwide. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Chicago, TransUnion employs more than 2,600 employees in more than 25 countries on five continents.www.transunion.com/healthcare