No two healthcare organizations are the same. Each has varied workflows that optimize efficacy and overall care for patients. That’s why healthcare software solutions should never be considered one-size-fits-all approaches. It isn’t fair, or terribly productive, to force healthcare organizations to adapt to new software. Rather, the healthcare software should adapt to them. At Experian Health, we’ll never supply a software product and then expect you to adjust workflows to suit it. Instead, we embed ourselves into your company to ensure we deeply understand your productivity needs and the reasons behind them. Only then can we tailor the solution we provide around you. It’s never too early to get it right The conversation about customizing your healthcare organization's solution begins before you even sign up. As soon as a solution interests you, we’ll start looking at how to tailor it to your unique needs. We’ll hold a meeting that includes subject matter experts and implementation leadership groups to uncover your greatest usability needs. Then, we’ll document those needs to better prepare whoever runs your project and ensure he or she has all the necessary information upfront. Then, gears start moving during the sales process. After choosing a solution, our team of experts works with members from every department in your organization to iron out the appropriate design and functionality details. We believe the people who will be using and relying on the solution every day should have a significant say in these details. However, we’ll do all the legwork of actually building and implementing the solution itself. By the time we’re ready to run internal tests to make sure the software works, members of every department will already know what to expect. Consequently, when they run user acceptance tests to check whether the solution fits into their workflows, they can accurately measure the solution’s performance against their input into its design. Afterward, we can iron out any hiccups they run into before initiating the organizationwide training and “go live” steps of the process. It’s never too late to make adjustments Our deep involvement in customizing your solution also begins before you select it, and it continues long after it's successfully implemented. We don’t go away just because we marked you as “live.” Instead, we understand that the healthcare industry is in constant flux and you might experience operational changes that warrant additional tinkering and tailoring to our solutions. We’ll stick around for a couple of days after going live, and we’ll stay available forever after, just in case. For example, if you purchase a new physician group six months after going live, you’ll face quite an uphill battle onboarding them all into your software system and, in turn, getting them up to speed. Because the group is new, you might face opposition to bringing on any change in general. In this case, you could use help facilitating the training and the adoption of your system into this new group, and that's where we step in. Additionally, what if this implementation requires a work queue structure that’s vastly different from yours? If the new group operates in a different area of the state, they might also have unique rules for some of their payers. These rules have to be incorporated into their system to accommodate the patient population. None of this, though, should fall solely on your shoulders. We can worry about the system's features so you can focus on the operational change management aspect. For our clients, we’re always on call. This devoted availability could range from six months or even six years. Whatever the situation, we know that you’ll eventually face circumstances that your software wasn’t originally designed to address. Instead of feeling stuck and frustrated, clients can find comfort in knowing we are here for every step of the process. And beyond tailoring your solution before implementing it, we also offer continued customization to help you tackle new circumstances without compromising workflow. Overall, here at Experian Health, we understand the pressures facing healthcare organizations today, and we are eager to be partners with you in securing the best solution for you needs and guiding you through the challenges ahead.

To help our clients keep up with regulatory changes, Experian Health will provide quarterly legislation updates: Q1 2018 updates  North Carolina Data Breach Legislation In North Carolina legislation has been proposed that would require notice to be made within 15 calendar days of discovery of a data breach. If passed, North Carolina will have one of the most onerous breach notification laws in the country. For comparison, California’s notice requirement is 15 business days. North Carolina’s current statute requires notice without “unreasonable delay.” Alabama Data Breach Legislation On March 21 South Dakota’s data breach notification bill was signed into law, leaving Alabama as the only state without a data breach notification law. However, Alabama is working to change that. On March 1 the Alabama Senate unanimously voted to pass the bill containing the Alabama Data Breach Notification Act, sending it on to the Alabama House. (The House subsequently amended it and returned it to the Senate for concurrence.) The Act would require notification of affected individuals within 45 days of determination that (a) a breach has occurred and (b) the breach is reasonably likely to cause substantial harm. There would be no private right of action, but the Alabama Attorney General would be able to fine companies that fail to notify up to $5,000 per day.

Seven years ago, Bill's healthcare group invested in a new health information system, and the dust still hasn’t quite settled. Like most health information system providers, Bill's vendor communicates mostly through the group’s IT leader. He has to pick and choose what updates and features are implemented, and the people who work with the system daily are expected to figure out how to make the most out of it. Fortunately, Bill and the head of IT are great pals. They eat lunch together, go out for after-work cocktails, and try to bridge the gap between their healthcare software vendor and the end users on the frontline. But Bill shouldn’t have to rely on that friendship for his healthcare team members to be able to do their jobs, and it shouldn't have taken seven years for the software to be properly integrated. Bill's not a real person, and his healthcare group is fictitious, but both are archetypes of the new healthcare landscape. Constant market changes and ongoing challenges have forced healthcare systems to partner more closely with medical software vendors. However, it’s challenging to find vendors that are willing to roll up their sleeves and work alongside the end users to design solutions that are tailored to their specific needs. At Experian Health, we want to make sure the first experience your team has with our health information system products is a positive one and that you all look forward to using them every day. Your group’s success is our top priority, and playing an active role in your onboarding process helps ensure that success. Providing health information systems and the knowledge to use them The problem with the archetype of Bill is that the end users in the group had to take on the tasks of learning and optimizing the system themselves. Trainers lacked the deep level of understanding needed to create enthusiasm about the system, and overall adoption lagged. By contrast, we know our solutions like the back of our hands, so it only makes sense for us to share that knowledge and collaborate to implement those solutions through medical software training. With years of experience under our belt working with healthcare organizations across the country, we’ve heard virtually every possible question end users ask. That experience gives us the flexibility to come up with on-the-fly solutions to challenges we haven’t thought of yet and suggest ways to optimize your group’s workflow with the system. We can offer shortcuts, tips, and tricks to make the system work more efficiently for your team. Collaborative onboarding lets our clients dive deeper into learning their new systems than they could by just reading predetermined lesson plans and FAQ lists. It helps us when we help you make the medical software training go smoother and ensure all end users actually want to use the product. In fact, for the first three to five months, Experian will be a physical presence at your organization, helping with change management and the onboarding process. Personalized, effective onboarding The process differs depending on how complex your organization is and what you’re installing, but typically, collaborative onboarding adheres to the following timeline: We start the process with a formal kickoff and demo to get executive leadership and everyone on the frontline up to speed. The demo lays out what the project will look like for the group and gives everyone the chance to start considering how to operationalize it for the organization. After the kickoff, our teams collaborate with specific subject matter experts and start digging into the nitty-gritty design and functionality detail work. We really stress the importance of operational input from people who will be champions for their specific areas, not just the IT teams. These champions need to communicate the details of the system’s design to their peers. When the design is complete, we do all of the heavy lifting to build the product, and then we conduct internal testing to make sure it works effectively. Next, we guide operational champions through user-acceptance testing to make sure the product meets their needs. User-acceptance testing occurs in a real-life, day-to-day setting so users can validate that it fits into their workflow. Once we iron out any changes warranted by the user-acceptance testing, we extend training into the larger workforce and officially go live. A month later, we come back and hold an optimization workshop to observe users in action. We can answer questions and provide suggestions on how to improve efficiency even further or make tweaks to improve user processes. With the rush to adopt faster and more efficient technology, many healthcare organizations have been left in the dust to figure out how to make new technology work best for them. At Experian Health, we stick around after software implementation to make sure your entire organization can hit the ground running. Our mission is to help the healthcare industry succeed in providing better, more comprehensive care to patients, and collaborative onboarding ensures our products do just that.

As the health industry faces extraordinary changes, how can leaders better drive efficiency and optimize resources? Recently President for Experian Health, Jennifer Schulz, sat down with The Business Debate to answer this pressing question. In short, the best way to get there is to turn to data-driven technology. In this interview, Jennifer touches on some of the main barriers to efficiency in health systems: Patient financial payments and identity management. Here are some excerpts from her interview. To watch the video and read Jennifer’s editorial, please click here. Patient financial payments and price transparency “The use of technology in healthcare is slim. When a consumer in a retail experience or a financial service experience uses their mobile device, or goes online, that experience doesn't translate into healthcare. Experian Health is very focused on improving the transparency of healthcare from a financial perspective. We've launched things like patient estimators because there’s no other large purchase you make in your life that you don't know what you're about to buy. And healthcare, for the most part, this all happens after the transaction, and that type of transparency in healthcare can come with the use of technology.” Universal patient identification “Another issue is identity isn't the same when you go from system to system. Every hospital, every provider looks at you as an individual, and puts a number associated with you. That number is within their system only, and so you may go across systems, but there is no view of identity. One of the solutions we've launched here at Experian Health is the universal identity manager, and we're offering that with no charge to our clients because we think identity is the one key to provide transparency across systems.” As we have done for other industries, Experian is at the forefront of bringing this type of consumerism to healthcare. Through our data assets and technology, we empower our clients to connect with consumers through a tailored approach that is personalized along the patient journey. To learn more, visit www.ExperianHealth.com.

In a new whitepaper, Technology and Data-Driven Decisions Driving Best Practices for Patient Collections, Experian Health analyzes the results of two recently fielded surveys aimed at learning how organizations approach the process of obtaining payment from patients. The paper reviews both an HFMA-led survey and an Experian Health-facilitated one, discussing the current state of patient collections, as well as emerging best practices to improve performance. While knowing that organizations are working with varying degrees of success to offer more patient-friendly financial interactions, using technology and data to inform and drive patient engagement, Experian Health wanted to understand the best practices that organizations are using to elevate performance in patient collections. Our findings were published in this HFMA whitepaper which discuss the findings from these two research projects and validate best practices and offer unique insight into the successes and shortfalls of the patient financial experience at health organizations.

This is an exciting time for our industry, and agility and knowledge are critical for your organization to Lead the Way by meeting the growing expectations of patients and keeping pace with the ever-changing healthcare landscape. Since 2004, the Experian Health 2017 Financial Performance Summit has connected business leaders to discuss innovative ideas and solutions, allowing organizations to improve their overall financial performance and increase profits. Summit 2017 focused on collaboration, idea sharing and networking, with numerous sessions on how you can take control of your organization’s road map for growth and operational efficiency. The intimate setting of Summit 2017 allowed for unique networking opportunities, one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts and numerous breakout sessions that will provide valuable insights from industry thought leaders. The three-day Summit provided hands-on learning opportunities with product experts and the exchange of knowledge with peers in an engaging environment. The agenda featured industry-leading speakers, provider- and Experian Health-led educational sessions, a dedicated leadership track, one-on-one training, networking lunches and receptions, and evening events featuring live entertainment. Break-out sessions at the Summit covered: Claims Collections Contract Manager Patient Access Patient Engagement Price Transparency Thought Leadership If you attended the Financial Performance Summit about would like to download any of the presentations, they are available here. If you would like to attend one of our future events, please contact us.

Manually cold-calling patients to remind them of upcoming appointments or of bills nearing a due date has never been an effective engagement strategy. On the contrary, such reactive tactics reduce engagement quality and can harm revenue cycles. It's important to remember that real connection empowers patients to be proactive in their care and improve their own outcomes, which encourages them to keep up with future appointments and medical payments. For modern healthcare organizations, maintaining this level of high engagement requires more than the automatic actions they’ve grown used to. Instead, the overall healthcare world needs more robust patient engagement to push forward and stay relevant with patients. Without this change, organizations are more likely to encounter skipped appointments, preventable readmissions, missed payments, revenue loss on several fronts, and poor patient outcomes. Fortunately, Experian Health offers a range of solutions that make it easy to engage patients in their care, improve patient outcomes, and create more profitable revenue cycle management (RCM) throughout an entire organization. Using patient engagement technology to improve care As previously mentioned in an Experian Health blog, patient portal technology — among others — is rewiring the technological landscape and capabilities in the physician and patient relationship. Portals are used for secure messaging by 41 percent of family practice physicians, and 35 percent of physicians also use them for patient education. This type of patient engagement technology culminates in our Patient Self-Service portal, which pools together data from our Patient Estimates, Patient Statements, and Coverage Discovery tools. The portal gives patients a single point of access to request estimates, pay bills, check financial assistance eligibility, and receive advice from doctors, nurses, and specialists. The above are just a few results from elevated, proactive patient engagement. Another perk is the portal’s unique ability to automatically populate patient-specific and payer-specific information into each estimate for optimal accuracy. This feature gives patients peace of mind by knowing what their exact out-of-pocket expenses amount to. When they receive a bill that matches the estimates they’ve been budgeting for, patients are more likely to adhere to payment obligations and return to a healthcare organization for future medical needs. This also makes it easier for an organization to collect payment at point of service and throughout the rest of the patient’s care continuum. Risk stratification for more successful revenue recovery For the first time in history, there is a growing convergence of powerful, internet-connected personal devices and massive amounts of analytical, social, financial, and behavioral data tied to individual patients. Experian Health’s timely patient engagement tools allow providers to tap into this convergence to revolutionize how they engage with patients at all points throughout their care. For example, by analyzing patient-specific financial information, this engagement technology can help providers identify when patients may benefit from financial assistance, especially for upcoming treatments. In turn, the provider can send the patient information about how to request for this type of assistance through an interactive portal with accurate estimates. To help reduce readmission rates for non-critical concerns, Experian Health’s tools can also help identify when patients may need unique, targeted engagement. For instance, patients with heart conditions can benefit from information regarding diet and lifestyle changes that improve cardiovascular health. These tools help providers determine the best type of content to send and the appropriate medium to send it through, such as email, text, or app notifications, according to the patient’s specific preferences. By working together with healthcare providers, Experian Health’s solutions combine highly personalized self-service with accurate price transparency and patient-risk stratification to proactively engage with patients. You, too, can be at the forefront of improving patient outcomes and RCM strategy effectiveness by understanding the changing healthcare environment. Utilizing tools, such as a patient portal and others, can position your organization to increase patient engagement and benefit from being a forward-facing healthcare provider.

Healthcare has always been driven by data, and today, providers have access to an unprecedented amount from a wide variety of sources. While this influx could be a blessing to the healthcare industry as a whole, it also poses a number of challenges, particularly when it comes to patient identity management. With a soaring volume of patient information coming in from numerous sources, identity errors become increasingly more likely, as well as the potential consequence of fatal mistakes. Keeping this in mind, the importance of effective identity management cannot be overstated. Every year, an estimated 195,000 people die due to medical mistakes. More than half of those deaths – 10 out of every 17 – are the result of identity management errors, such as duplicate records and mistaken patient identities. While current healthcare IT solutions attempt to tackle these discrepancies, they only succeed in identifying about 10 percent of all duplicate records. Consequently, patients often undergo repeated tests or receive incorrect treatment or medication that can result in adverse effects to their health. Also, there is limited coordination of patient data throughout the healthcare ecosystem. The main culprit of this is the lack of secure data transfers that compromise patient records and identity. This raises the question: How can healthcare organizations better manage the massive amounts of data related to each patient’s medical identity? Luckily, such issues can be improved with Experian Health’s Universal Identity Manager (UIM), which creates a single identity for individual patients across multiple disparate healthcare databases. Upgrade your identity management system The ability to share patient information across multiple healthcare organizations with different care management programs is at the core of optimizing overall patient care. Properly utilizing patient and population health data can dramatically improve an organization’s efficiency, raise its quality of care, and lower its readmissions rate. For patient data to be useful, however, providers require a robust infrastructure that allows for secure, precise, and accurate storage of patient data. The same framework should be able to assign patients unique identities across the entire network. In turn, a single, universal patient identity system allows for better analytical insights and more effective care personalization. This kind of management system also allows an organization to add relevant data to a patient’s medical profile faster and more accurately, creating an improved dynamic database that can develop personalized patient engagement and care plans. How Experian Health’s universal identity management software helps Administrative slip-ups in healthcare can have drastic consequences for a patient’s health and wellbeing. Eliminating these inaccuracies is the main goal of Experian Health’s UIM solution. Experian Health has the benefit of leveraging data assets available to us from being part of broader Experian. As a result, the identity management software generates and assigns a unique identifier to each patient that remains consistent across various healthcare systems, such as hospitals, therapeutic facilities, pharmacies, and healthcare payers. Drawing on decades of experience in identity management, Experian Health's multi-matching methodology approach eliminates duplicate and erroneous data through comprehensive search and alert processes. It provides a high degree of likeliness because it expands beyond the limitations of the conventional single-matching methodology that most health systems use today. Even records created on disparate healthcare systems can be automatically analyzed and assigned to the appropriate patient identity. In addition to eliminating discrepancies that could affect the quality of patient care, universal identity management also reduces medical and billing errors, ultimately minimizing an organization's risk of fraud. The solution also works in tandem with Experian Health’s suite of patient engagement and transparency tools, including its Patient Self-Service portal, to further optimize an organization’s ability to deliver personalized, high-quality care. Unique patient identifiers are critical for healthcare organizations to reduce the risks of inaccurate and duplicate records that lead to errors and low-quality care. Combined with Experian Health's suite of patient engagement and price transparency tools, its identity management software is a leap toward making efficient and reliable interoperability more possible across the healthcare ecosystem.

Consumers love the ability to research and compare prices of products on the fly so they know upfront what they’re signing up for. They’ve come to expect this level of empowerment in every transaction. Yet in healthcare, that expectation is now a demand as patients shoulder increasingly higher out-of-pocket costs.   Patients are also wary of being surprised by exorbitant hospital bills months after care. As a precaution, they want to know how much of the costs they’ll be responsible for before they receive treatment. Additionally, it would also be nice to make payments and schedule appointments online without being put on hold for hours or dealing with confusing call centers.   Until now, healthcare providers have been more or less behind the times when it comes to integrating technology into everyday workflows. With this in mind, organizations need to make price transparency and self-service vital aspects of the care they provide, and they need the right technology to do it. Fortunately, benefits of self-service portals not only include price transparency, but also appointment scheduling. Experian Health’s range of tools, such as the Patient Self-Service portal, makes it easy for any healthcare provider to catch up and equip patients with the tools they need to be confident in their care and payments.   Advantages of self-service portals   Patient engagement is the cornerstone of quality care and clinical outcomes. However, it can be difficult when patients are prematurely frustrated because they already know they’ll be hit with higher than expected costs for their visit, tests, and treatments. As a solution, moving patient billing to the front of the revenue cycle eliminates that worry, making it the first step to build trust and improve patient engagement.   The next step is making administration simple and convenient for patients. Scheduling appointments, changing insurance or address information, and asking questions about their treatment shouldn’t be arduous processes. When patients can accomplish these tasks quickly and conveniently, they feel more satisfied with their chosen healthcare provider.   Empowering patients through information and engagement helps them manage their ailments, illnesses, or simple doctor visits more efficiently, which translates to fewer readmissions. Providers can also improve their cash flow by delivering accurate estimates and immediate balance notifications, rather than making patients wait up to 30 days for paper statements. In turn, patients and providers can both benefit from using a self-service portal because it improves virtually every aspect of healthcare administration.   Key benefits of self-service technology in an all-in-one portal   Experian Health’s Patient Self-Service portal makes it easier to keep patients informed and empowered, which not only improves the quality of their care, but also aids an organization’s financial health. For instance, manual scheduling alone takes one person or a team of full-time employees, which can be costly. On the other hand, in a self-service portal, patients interact directly with technology without the need for full-time human assistance.   The easy-to-use portal isn’t just about scheduling, though. Through the portal, patients can also check whether they qualify for financial assistance, receive support for presurgery planning and postsurgical follow-ups, and email questions to their medical team. Another helpful portal feature notifies patients about their possible qualification for charity care. If eligible, patients can avoid medical bankruptcy by setting up a crowdfunding page to help pay their bills.   Furthermore, the portal is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's where the head of a household can review and update the entire family’s billing, account, and insurance information conveniently in one place. In addition, patients can receive a consolidated bill that's easy to understand and set up automatic payments so they know how to budget for future healthcare costs.   Combined with upfront price transparency – which is now a legal requirement in many states – the Patient Self-Service portal provides vital benefits for streamlining healthcare administration and engaging with patients on the level that they need and expect.