MAY 20258In My OpinionHOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR BUSINESS PARTNERS?By Sarah Ginnetti, Associate Vice President, Revenue Cycle, UConn HealthHaving several business partners and outsourcing various pieces of your operation is in no short supply when it comes to running a top-performing revenue cycle. What is less apparent, however, is how well you are managing those relationships. From time to time, leaders fall prey to a false sense of security and adopt a "set it and forget it" philosophy. In other words, once the partnership is in place, it's the business partner's responsibility to own the work and deliver results, right? Not so fast.Each partnership comes with a set of principles that revenue cycle leaders need to adhere to:1. Add a vendor liaison to your internal team. Consider this person your dedicated vigilante. The liaison should monitor files and activity on a daily or weekly basis at a minimum and should quickly escalate if process defects or potential issues are identified. The longer you wait to address something, the longer the fix will take to remedy and the larger the fix. Do not load this liaison role onto someone's already full plate. They will not succeed. Repurpose a strong staff member whose load may be significantly reduced as a result of these business partnerships.2. Develop reconciliation files with your IT department. Do not assume what the vendor returns to you is accurate. Trust but verify using your data. Reconcile inventory weekly and develop a process to validate performance and invoices, particularly when it is tied to revenue recovery. The devil is in the details.3. Take your time with implementation. Do not sign off on the implementation phase of any new partnership until 99% of your needs have been met. Once you have migrated off implementation, it will be harder to have break/fix items addressed.4. Mandate meetings. Hold monthly operational meetings with key stakeholders internally and those Sarah Ginnetti
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