As a leader, helping your team transit this unprecedented time in healthcare you have had to act, react and get creative in guiding your revenue operations while keeping the finances as fluid as possible. All facilities and organizations are dealing with similar challenges. Some solutions and approaches have been successful while others didn’t have the impact expected or failed due to lack of support, infrastructure or resources.

We would like connect those of you on the front lines managing a revenue cycle through the COVID-19 crisis - sharing successes, challenges and obstacles.

Enjoy our first interview of the series with Kim Thomas, Revenue Cycle Director | Columbia Memorial Hospital

1. Kim, tell us a little about your organization - how big is your revenue cycle team?

   Columbia Memorial Hospital is a Critical Access Hospital on steroids, as we like to say here. We provide a number of specialty services, Primary, Urgent, and Emergency care. Our revenue cycle team consists of 35 professionals. 

2. Has your organization put together a core team to manage, direct and communicate strategy to the overall organization? Who is on the team? 

   We implemented our Emergency Operations Center (A central command and control facility responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness) several weeks ago and they are meeting twice daily to manage our response to all things COVID-related. 

3. As the Director, what has been your biggest challenge in the Business Office? 

   Unfortunately, working from home is not something we can accommodate at this time so our revenue cycle team, viewed as essential staff, must work in the office practicing social distancing. As we go through this pandemic, this team’s mission is important to the organization’s ability to serve the community and stay financially healthy. 

   As you might imagine, the team has been anxious and even fearful. From their perspective, they went into healthcare to support the financial operation of the hospital – not to care for and interact with disease directly. Although not at the hospital building, there is still anxiety about infection and a lot of what-ifs. Heightened by this, is the frustration with the categorization as “essential”.

   To allay concerns we have focused on two things:

   • Over-communication: This includes our leadership sharing daily updates, information about the current state and local needs, as well as vision for the future. In addition, the team needs to hear from us to why they are essential and critical to operations - not just to hear it, but to learn the facts and believe that they are the path to financial recovery. This has not and will not be a one-time conversation. 

   • Providing a direct connection to our Infection Preventionist for questions and ongoing pointers on work-safety.

4. What words of advice or lessons learned would you share with your peers at other organizations? 

   Over-communicate! When activity is happening at all levels of the organization, one update a day is not enough to calm the team’s anxiety. My recommendation is, if you aren’t doing daily huddles, start them right away. Get the team together more than once a day if possible. Secondly, get input from the employees directly through rounding or surveys so you can make sure you’re addressing concerns and providing them what they need as much as possible. 

If you are interested in sharing some of your organizations experiences, successes and challenges with your peers or if you have questions you’d like to ask your peers, let us know below.
We’d love to interview you or just get your feedback!