9 tips to ensure a smooth revenue cycle management vendor onboarding process
Perhaps you’ve made the decision to partner with a new revenue cycle management (RCM) vendor, or you’ve opened a newly independent medical practice and hired an RCM vendor for the first time. Either way, the next step is to integrate them into your medical practice. That’s where the new vendor onboarding process comes in. Following vendor onboarding best practices helps ensure smooth RCM processes with minimal cashflow disruptions.
What is vendor onboarding?
Vendor onboarding is the process during which you and the RCM outsourcing vendor work together to guide your medical practice’s workflow. This process creates a critical foundation for the professional partnership. It outlines what you’ll expect from the RCM vendor and what that vendor can expect from your medical practice. During the new vendor onboarding process, your new RCM vendor answers standard questions, and your medical practice conveys its processes and other important information. The goal is to work together productively, minimize compliance risk, and maximize the value of the partnership.
Why is it important to formalize the new vendor onboarding process?
It’s important so you don’t overlook the exchange of critical information that can enhance cashflow for your medical practice. In addition, a formalized onboarding process prioritizes the relationship. It empowers collaboration, ensures consistent data collections, improves project management, reduces time to value, and mitigates risk.
What are some vendor onboarding best practices?
Not sure how to onboard a vendor? When onboarding an RCM vendor, consider these best practice strategies:
Convey your medical practice’s mission statement and values to your new RCM vendor. This helps ensure your vendor will align itself with this vision. For example, does your medical practice prioritize patient empowerment and the overall patient experience? Help your new RCM vendor understand how it can aid in this effort through its messaging to patients as well as its features and functionalities, including online bill pay, secure messaging, patient-free patient check-ins, and more.
Ask your new RCM vendor to provide detailed training. For example, ask your RCM vendor how you can run customizable and actionable reports. What about maximizing administrative functionality or rolling out the patient portal or patient kiosk?
Provide your new RCM vendor with internal coding guidelines for your medical practice. This helps ensure compliant and consistent coding at all times.
Provide a single point of contact at the medical practice for easy outreach. For example, this could be the medical practice manager or internal coding manager. This person should feel comfortable and confident working through the RCM vendor onboarding checklist, guiding conversations, addressing any barriers along the way, and setting the overall tone for the engagement. In addition, when your new RCM vendor has questions or needs immediate assistance, it will immediately know who to contact and how. This helps cut through red tape so your RCM vendor can submit clean claims as quickly as possible.
Set clear performance expectations. To what key performance indicators (KPI) will you hold your new RCM vendor responsible, and how often will you review relevant data? Examples of common KPIs include days in accounts receivable, practice revenue growth, first pass payment rate, or denial rate. Be sure to also ask your RCM vendor this important question: How will it prevent denials proactively?
Establish and map key processes together. For example, how will the new RCM vendor handle certain types of denials? What about pending claims or physician queries?
Ask your vendor what it needs from your medical practice to be successful. For example, does it need to see historical records or data? What about access to certain IT personnel?
Ask your RCM vendor to make suggestions. Is there something about your previous RCM process that didn’t work well or that wasn’t efficient? Your new RCM partner likely has a wealth of knowledge and experience on which it can draw to make things better.
Keep the lines of communication open. The onboarding process begins at the onset of a working relationship, but it shouldn’t end there. Onboarding sets the tone, but consistent and open communication is what works best over time.
Conclusion
The new vendor onboarding process is a critical first step toward ensuring a vibrant partnership. Formalizing this process helps ensure you don’t overlook important details. Following vendor onboarding best practices can help your medical practice derive maximum value and promote financial viability in the short- and long-term. Learn how edgeMED can help at https://www.edgemed.com and be sure to visit the Healthy Snacks Blog for more expert insights, best practices and industry trends.
