Unlocking Revenue in Healthcare: The Power of Efficient Credentialing

In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, where patient safety remains paramount, there is another crucial aspect that often goes unnoticed - the financial health of healthcare organizations. While we all understand that credentialing and privileging processes are essential for patient safety, what may come as a surprise is their significant impact on the bottom line. In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of decreasing time to revenue in the healthcare industry and how a solution like CredentialStream®, by HealthStream®, can help save money and generate revenue for your organization.

The Bottom Line Beyond Safety

Approximately 400,000 hospitalized patients in the U.S. will experience some type of preventable harm each year, which can cost a healthcare organization $20 billion. For any healthcare institution, ensuring patient safety is a fundamental obligation. Credentialing and privileging processes are the backbone of this commitment, ensuring that only qualified and competent healthcare professionals are granted privileges to provide care. However, these processes aren't just about safety; they are also about the organization's financial health.

Generating Revenue, Not Just Saving Costs

It's common knowledge that an efficient credentialing and privileging solution can save you time and money by reducing administrative costs and improving operational efficiency. But did you know that it can also generate revenue for your organization? The credentialing process can take anywhere from 90-120 days depending on delays, while facilities can lose up to $1.2 million in revenue. So, choosing the right software is vital to accelerating your organization's credentialing cycle and boosting its revenue outcome.

CredentialStream: Your Path to Efficiency and Revenue Generation

According to Merritt Hawkins, physicians generate 2.4 million for affiliated hospitals each year, with the highest being interventional cardiologists who generate $3.48 million a year. As physician turnover rates increase due to more clinician burnout, the financial health of organizations proves to be at risk. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that there will be a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034. Losing a physician prevents hospitals from receiving the revenue associated with those cases until the physician is replaced. Revenue lost from the vacancy of a physician is dependent on the specialty but could mean a loss of $130,000 per month until the vacancy is filled. There are many reasons linked to why a physician experiences burnout, but one of the top reasons is too many administrative tasks. The 2023 Medscape Physician Compensation Report reveals that on average, physicians are spending 15.5 hours a week on administrative chores.

With a solution like CredentialStream, there are several key ways to improve administrative productivity and decrease the time to revenue. By going beyond credentialing, CredentialStream offers an integrated, comprehensive approach to the entire time-to-revenue process. This includes credentialing, privileging, enrollment, onboarding, compliance training, and EMR provisioning, all within a unified, user-friendly application.

Two new enhancements to the platform, the Roster Generator and Library solution, are noteworthy as they offer advanced payer roster functionality. And, an upcoming launch of “My Learning for Providers” will enable seamless access to compliance courses within CredentialStream, enhancing efficiency by allowing providers to complete necessary training as they fulfill their credentialing tasks.

Other functionality supporting improved time-to-revenue includes:

1. Enrollment
   

   One of the most significant contributors to revenue generation is the speed at which healthcare professionals can start providing care and billing for their services. CredentialStream’s Enroll functionality delivers best practice workflows and a deep library of instantly deployable content to automate the entire provider enrollment process, ensuring that providers can hit the ground running faster than ever before.



2. Onboarding
   

   Onboarding workflows are often complex and frustrating for providers. They reach across multiple departments, are siloed, and involve way too much paperwork. CredentialStream’s Onboard covers every angle of provider recruiting and onboarding on a single platform, including credentialing and enrollment, assigned learning and orientation, and everything in between.



3. Benchmarking
   

   To improve efficiency and reduce time to revenue, it's essential to have a clear understanding of your current credentialing turnaround times. CredentialStream provides valuable insights into these metrics, allowing you to pinpoint areas for growth. From there, the solution provides tools to help you set and track goals effectively. CredentialStream also offers Insights, innovative data visualizations based on national proprietary benchmarks, that your organization can use to see how your processes stack up against like organizations so that you can identify and prioritize action plans for improvement where needed.

Conclusion

In the healthcare industry, credentialing and privileging processes are more than just administrative tasks; they are strategic opportunities to improve your bottom line. By investing in solutions like CredentialStream that focus on efficiency and revenue generation, you ensure patient safety and strengthen your organization's financial health. It's a win-win that can reshape the way you approach credentialing in healthcare. Schedule a demo to learn more.