Palms Home Health Care

Palms identified numerous significant outstanding balances in its accounts receivable (AR). They initially reached out to Richter to help address these balances. Yet, after a discovery call, Richter’s performance advisors concluded that many of these balances were uncollectible. Moreover, it was apparent that Palms lacked the proper revenue cycle structure to minimize outstanding balances and lost revenue. Identifying the root causes of these issues was essential, so Palms instead engaged Richter to perform a thorough process review.

Richter’s financial process review for Palms was extensive and included interviewing staff from intake through billing and follow-up; reviewing the configuration and utilization of revenue cycle management software; examining the organization’s policies, procedures, job titles and job descriptions; and analyzing all aging receivables. Some questions we asked included:

• How do you get your incoming referrals
• What are your referral sources?
• When you get that referral, what’s the first thing you do?
• Who does the verification on the payer?
• Once you get the verification, who follows up on it, and how is it documented? Is it in the system, or is it something that you write down on a piece of paper? If it’s paper, who has it? How do we know it’s correct?

Overall, our review dove deep to review inherent processes throughout the organization and identify bottlenecks and other issues.