From average to No. 1 with enterprise revenue cycle management solution

Baystate Medical Practices (BMP) has relied on athenaIDX for decades to steadily advance its billing and collections practices. In recent years, the organization achieved national recognition from the Vizient Billing Office Survey, which benchmarks peer faculty practice plans in both cost and revenue operations.

“After ranking at 59 several years ago, BMP consistently attained top-five rankings in the past four years,” said Jonathan Moss, Director of Medical Practice Business Services. “In 2019, we ranked No. 1 for the first time.” He credits the functions and intuitiveness of athenaIDX — as well as athenahealth’s client services team for its unwavering commitment to his organization’s success. “For the past few years our client success manager has regularly asked, ‘How can we help Baystate get to No. 1?’ athenaIDX had our interests in mind. And that kind of support helped us over the goal line.”

athenaIDX is an enterprise revenue cycle management solution that helps healthcare organizations in myriad of ways: by optimizing financial performance, minimizing risk, and maximizing margin. The comprehensive Enterprise Task Manager (ETM) functionality identifies issues and enables billing staff to work only the tasks that require follow up. This technology has helped Baystate reduce the average days in accounts receivable from 34.2 three years ago to about 30 today — in addition to improving time to payment, first-claim payment successes, and other indicators of effective reimbursement practices.

One tool Baystate consistently uses is a monthly practice ranking report. Drawing from revenue data in athenaIDX, the report provides deep visibility into performance across the enterprise, including accounts receivable, denials, and point-of-service collections. “Having those statistics on hand is extraordinarily valuable to making improvements across our medical practices,” said Moss. athenaIDX has also helped the organization track and drive employee productivity. “With the functionality of athenaIDX we have the ability to continually fine-tune our organization’s profitability,” said Moss.

Moss and his team use athenaIDX data to foster a culture of inclusion and enthusiasm. “We created a dashboard for our billing team showing trends in key areas,” Moss said. “That helped our staff align around common goals. The leadership share positive feedback with their employees and figure out where there are learning opportunities for an employee or across a whole unit.”

The data-rich environment of athenaIDX and its outstanding customer support helped us achieve national recognition for our cost and revenue operations.

Moss anticipates athenaIDX will continue to play a central role in the organization’s innovation and efficiency. His team uses data from athenaIDX to inform joint initiatives with payers, for example, as well as guide a strategy to permanently transition a percentage of services to virtual care postpandemic. “Having the tools, support and data from athenaIDX helps us streamline operations and contain costs in the short term,” Moss said, “while identifying areas for effectively extending our reach in the long term.”