How the Hospitalist Drives Hospital Revenues

There’s no question that physicians serving in the hospitalist role play a critical role in the daily operations of a hospital. It’s fair to say that the quality of your hospitalist service can have a substantial impact on everything from hospital revenue to patient satisfaction and outcomes. It is no coincidence that the most successful hospitals in the U.S. are focusing on their hospitalist services more than ever. 

 

This Open Source MD article focuses on how the hospitalist drives revenues and how a high-performance hospitalist service can be the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

 

Increasing Hospital Revenue by Optimizing Patient Flow

Admissions, discharges, and everything in between are a hospital’s bread and butter. A well-tuned hospitalist service helps enhance a hospital’s bottom line by expertly managing patient flow while alleviating costly payer denials. 

For example, a strong hospitalists program can effectively speed up patient turnover and reduce length of stay while maintaining or improving quality of care. As for what happens between admission and discharge—a performative hospitalist service improves revenues by effectively coordinating care between departments and specialists and minimizing delays or bottlenecks in a patient’s care. 

How patient flow optimization can increase hospital revenues: 

Efficient Admissions and Discharges

• Quick patient turnover.
• Reducing average length of stay.

Streamlined Patient Management

• Effective care coordination.
• Minimizing delays and bottlenecks in patient care.

 

Improving Clinical Documentation Integrity to Raise Revenues

Another area where an effective hospitalist service can also help keep a hospital in more black ink than red is by improving clinical documentation integrity (CDI). The effect that CDI has on sustainable net patient revenue while minimizing payer denials and costly financial recoupments is often underestimated.

The truth is that denials costs American hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A hospitalist service that is well-trained in clinical documentation best practices can make a marked difference to hospital revenues through capture and accurate reflection of patient’s clinical story and severity of illness.. Physicians who can tell a patient’s medical story well and clearly outline the treatment progression are the key to getting the approvals you seek. 

Complete and accurate medical record documentation is fundamental to the revenue cycle by establishing medical necessity for hospitalization and continued stay. Physicians who can tell, show, tell, describe, and depict a patient’s clinical picture, along with their clinical judgment and medical decision-making, are the key to securing payer hospital admission authorization.

Benefitting from clinical documentation: 

Implement CDI Best Practices

• Train hospitalists to create more effective clinical documentation.
• See improvements in patient satisfaction and quality of care.

Better Documentation = Enhanced Sustainable Net Patient Revenue

• Optimized Physician Documentation and Communication of Patient Care substantially reduces the number of denials
• Physician Documentation Excellence enables and fosters approvals for specialized treatments.

 

How Hospitalists Can Raise Revenue with Specialized Care

Hospitalists with deep clinical knowledge and experience can diagnose and manage more complex medical conditions. They also reduce the need for external specialists, markedly improving the efficiency and timeliness of care delivery.

Hospitalists help enhance hospital revenues by delivering specialized treatments and high-value procedures. Hospitals with more specialists attract patients who need specialized care and raise the hospital’s profile and prestige. 

Hospitalists with specializations deliver more value by:

Managing High-Complexity Cases

• Expertise in dealing with complex medical conditions.
• Increased revenue generation from specialized treatments.

Procedural Competence

• Performing high-value procedures.
• Boosting hospital income through advanced care.

 

Reducing Readmission Rates, Saving Money and Resources

An optimized hospitalist service reduces readmission rates through comprehensive discharge planning and proactive management of chronic conditions, taking a holistic approach to patient management,

Hospitals with lower readmission rates operate more cost-effectively, avoiding Medicare significant penalties under the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. This allows them to allocate more beds to new patients rather than readmits. Readmissions lead to potential loss of revenue through payer denials and disallowance of the second readmission, regardless of whether the second admission is related to the index admission.

How hospitalists raise revenues by reducing readmissions: 

Effective Patient Follow-Up

• Ensuring comprehensive discharge planning.
• Reducing 30-day readmission rates.

Chronic Disease Management

• Proactive management of chronic conditions.
• Prevention of unnecessary readmissions.
• Avoidance of unnecessary ER visits that often lead to unnecessary hospital admissions

 

Improving Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty

The patient’s relationship with the hospital and their physician doesn’t end after discharge. The hospitalist plays a pivotal role by managing every key aspect of a patient’s experience, from admission, diagnosis, and care to discharge and continuing care.

Hospitalists interact with patients and their families to help them make informed medical decisions and build trust through continuing care and follow-ups. Establishing that trust and ensuring continuity of care is essential to patient satisfaction and outcomes. 

The patient experience affects a hospital’s reputation, and as we all know, it is far easier to earn a good reputation than to overcome a negative one. We also see the impact both can have on hospital revenue. Patient satisfaction is a significant component of a hospital’s ranking on HosptialCompare.io, a website where patients can compare overall hospital outcomes and decide where to seek care.

How hospitalists improve patient satisfaction and earn trust: 

Deliver Consistent, Quality Care

• Building trust with patients through continuous care.
• Enhance patient satisfaction scores.

Create Positive Patient Experiences

• Prompt response to patient needs.
• Improved communication with patients and families.

 

Hospitalists Grow Hosptial Revenue Through Best Practices and Initiatives

The hospitalist delivers and coordinates patient care and serves an important leadership role within the hospital. They ensure quality of care, introduce evidence-based practices, and enhance hospital performance metrics.

The best hospitalists are innovators who know how to inspire loyalty and get the best possible performance out of their teams while keeping an ‘open door’ policy and being easy to engage. They set an example through the excellence of their work and development of novel solutions to setbacks, capitalizing upon opportunities to accelerate performance and optimize patient care and outcomes.

These qualities help raise the standard of care in hospitals. They also help hospitals attract and retain the best talent. All the above unequivocally improve hospital revenues by raising a hospital’s profile and attracting patients. 

How hospitalists raise the standard of care and revenue generation:

Implementation of Best Practices

• Adopting evidence-based guidelines.
• Ensuring high standards of care.

Continuous Improvement Initiatives

• Executing hospital quality improvement programs that achieve solid outcomes.
• Enhancing overall hospital performance metrics.

 

The Open Source MD Philosophy

Open Source MD was designed to set the standard of and raise the bar of how physicians and hospitals collaborate. Our motivation is to build and create sustainable, highly efficient, high-performance hospitalist teams that improve quality of care and boost hospital revenues with solid financial performance. 

Open Source Physician’s philosophy is to partner with the hospital to best serve and meet the community’s healthcare needs, supporting the community and its reliance on the hospital for care.

 

Open Source MD: Building High-Performance Hospitalist Teams

We are a team of highly experienced physicians who have practiced in hospitals for decades. We rely on invaluable hard-won knowledge and experience to help hospitals achieve optimal quality, focused, fully informed, coordinated, and cost-effective outcomes-based care. 

What differentiates Open Source Physicians from hospitalist group competitors is our avoidance of playing the middleman and obfuscating physician-to-hospital relations. 

Rather, we focus on bringing physicians and great hospitals together, achieving operational excellence through solidifying a collaborative outcomes-based approach to medicine. We do not lose sight of the hospital’s mission to deliver patient-centric care while maintaining solid financial performance.

We’re motivated to build mutually beneficial, long-term relationships between physicians and hospitals. 

Let’s talk. Call  336-997-9840 or contact us online to learn more.