A Large Orthopedic Group Ranks in Top 10% Nationally with 94% Epic Self-Pay Net Collection Ratio After Improving Patient Pay Revenue Cycle

We partnered with one of Virginia’s largest provider of orthopedic medicine and one of the top five largest orthopedic specialty practices in the country. 

This large orthopedic group is the official orthopedic and sports medicine provider for the NFL’s Washington Commanders, college athletics programs at George Mason University, University of Richmond, and Liberty University, and dozens of youth and community athletics programs. 

Like many orthopedic practices, their patient revenue has steadily increased over the last several years and is currently 35% of their total revenue, making effective patient revenue collection critical to their overall financial performance. 

Large Orthopedic Group Seeks To Improve Patient Collections

The orthopedic group was doing an excellent job at collecting patient responsibility prior to treatment but was faced with the challenge of addressing two goals with their existing staff:

1. Improve front-end processes to reduce denials and other delays in payments from insurance
2. Collect more self-pay, post-adjudication patient revenue

While the strategy for collecting post-adjudication patient balances, was effective – resulting in performance above the industry standards for Epic’s Self-Pay Net Collection Ratio – there remained approximately $20 million in patient balances that were not collected resulting in bad debt.

Objectives

• Optimize Investment in Epic: The orthopedic group wanted a partner with Epic experience to maximize utilization of Epic and drive adoption of Epic MyChart.
• Control Cost to Collect: They wanted a solution that would not increase the incremental cost to collect while increasing their patient revenue collection rate. 
• Reduce Bad Debt Exposure: They were doing well, but wanted to increase the percentage of revenue collected and decrease the revenue that was going to collections. 
• Partner with Understanding of Orthopedics Practices: They wanted a partner with expertise in patient payments and experience with orthopedic practices.

Millennia Patient Payment Solution

The key stakeholders were impressed by how Millennia’s solution augmented their digital strategy and the technology they had already deployed. “We have made a significant investment in our Epic instance and are working to increase patient adoption of the MyChart portal. It was important to implement a solution that works with Epic and augments the functionality that is already available within Epic,” says the Executive Director.

Millennia’s solution addressed the need to tackle both an improvement in denials management and patient payment collection without adding staff. Millennia’s Concierge team manages all inbound and outbound patient payment communications, which allowed the orthopedic group to redeploy their internal resources to other areas such as denials management and collecting prepayments. 

Additionally, the orthopedic group is very excited about the positive patient satisfaction survey results and appreciates that Millennia not only drives financial performance, but also creates a positive patient experience that reflects their commitment to delivering patient-centered care. 

“Millennia took into account our investment in Epic, our desire to redeploy an internal team to other revenue cycle initiatives, and our need to control costs. Millennia Patient Payment Solution took our patient pay revenue cycle performance from good to great in a very short time,” says the Executive Director.

“Millennia understood the needs of multiple stakeholders across our organization and has delivered a solution that quickly improved our patient self-pay revenue collection rate and created an immediate positive financial impact for us.”

Executive Director

Results & Key Outcomes

Millennia implemented the Patient Payment Solution in less than 45 days. The solution immediately started making an impact, with exceptional results in the first three months.

• The collection rate for patient self-pay is up 12%
• Bad debt exposure has been reduced by 19%
• The orthopedic group is in the top 10% for Epic’s self-pay collection ratio
• The orthopedic group expects a 7-figure revenue increase