MedAssets today announced that Athens Regional Medical Center, the 350-plus bed anchor hospital for Athens Regional Health System, has expanded its engagement with the company in a broad-scale technology initiative designed to optimize revenue cycle operations. ARMC's multi-phased agreement will deploy MedAssets end-to-end portfolio of Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) solutions to upgrade and standardize its technology environment.

"Similar to most healthcare organizations, managing multiple technology systems presents a challenge to achieving aggregated reporting and best practice workflows and processes," said Wendy Cook, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Athens Regional Medical Center. "At the same time, we needed to upgrade our system capabilities to address pricing strategies and how our patients perceive value, prepare for ICD-10, as well as manage a more complex and challenging payor environment. MedAssets offers a robust set of exception-driven technologies that can improve revenue cycle operations in all these areas and more, plus its software is agnostic to enterprise platforms to support better corporate transparency. We look forward to achieving process improvements while also attaining greater reimbursement yield."

Holistic Approach to Improve Revenue Performance 

The new, expanded agreement builds upon ARMC's use of MedAssets Charge, Pricing and Compliance Solutions for more accurate and compliant charging as well as defensible and consistent pricing for improved revenue capture and reimbursement. To support its broad-scale RCM initiative, the following MedAssets solutions were selected to support ARMC's operational focus:

• Contract and Episode Management Solutions to improve payor contract analysis and revenue forecasting, and better identify underpayments to capture increased net revenue
• Claims and Billing Solutions that leverage healthcare information management (HIM) and coding expertise to automate the identification of missing charges, overcharges and claim coding errors
• Recovery and Collections Solutions that reduce denials and cost to collect, as well as improve staff workflow and decision support capabilities to capture and prioritize all necessary collections data
• Patient Access Solutions that offer pricing transparency for patient financial clearance and increased automation and accuracy in upfront collection of patient out-of-pocket responsibilities

"As care providers like ARMC adjust to the changing healthcare marketplace, it is critical to re-evaluate existing technology capabilities against best practices necessary to generate overall performance improvement," said Amy Amick, president, Revenue Cycle Management, MedAssets. "Our end-to-end, Web-based portfolio and expert services help healthcare providers to improve business operations in a way that is non-disruptive, low-risk and demonstrates real impact. This includes the ability to navigate emerging trends such as the increasing role of the consumer, shifting payment models and the increasing complexity of A/R management. We look forward to continuing to support ARMC in achieving best practices throughout the revenue cycle management continuum."