Revenue Cycle Management

The revenue cycle is the process a claim goes through from patient intake to accounts receivable collections. It is made up of multiple steps, such as eligibility and authorization, claim submission, denial management, and reporting. Revenue cycle management (RCM) is the process of managing the claims cycle in your organization. I want to talk about optimizing that process.

I often find that when a practice is reviewing their RCM processes, they tend to focus on the billing and collections part of revenue cycle. While that is a large piece of the revenue cycle, it is still only a piece. Look at the revenue cycle as a wheel. If a wheel is not perfectly spherical, it will not function properly and at some point, will fall flat. Only focusing on one part of the revenue cycle will essentially give your business a flat tire.