2024 Kodiak Healthcare Virtual Symposium Event Summary
Kodiak Healthcare Virtual Symposium highlights the next chapter in healthcare revenue cycle management.
Nearly 300 revenue cycle leaders from across the country attended the Kodiak Solutions Healthcare Virtual Symposium, held March 13, 2024, and examined the theme “exploring the next chapter in healthcare.”
Exploration took attendees through six candid and lively discussions with front-line revenue cycle leaders who experience the present and see the future of healthcare revenue cycle management from their vantage point. Revenue cycle specialists from Kodiak led each discussion, with topics ranging from the uncertainties of revenue cycle automation technology to the quantifiable metrics of third-party revenue cycle vendor performance.
This year’s virtual symposium also included four bonus segments about:
The 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Awards
The ransomware attack on Change Healthcare
Healthcare Women Connexxt: The women who inspire women in healthcare finance
Derek Bang, Kodiak Solutions founder and CEO, on leadership
Table of Contents
Opening Keynote: The Ascent of Healthcare Intelligence: How Smart Tech Will Transform Outcomes
Session 1: Revenue Integrity Intelligence
Session 2: Clinical Intelligence
Session 3: Vendor Performance Intelligence
Session 4: Executive-Level Intelligence
Closing Keynote: Healthcare Technology Intelligence
Bonus Segment: Kodiak 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Awards
Bonus Segment: Responding to the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack
Bonus Segment: Honoring Women's History Month with Kodiak Healthcare Women Connexxt
Bonus Segment: Meet Kodiak Founder and CEO Derek Bang
Opening Keynote
The Ascent of Healthcare Intelligence: How Smart Tech Will Transform Outcomes
The 2024 Kodiak Healthcare Virtual Symposium opened with a thought-provoking session on the fits and starts of using smart technology to automate the revenue cycle. Jeremy Scott, the associate director of strategy and market intelligence at Baxter International, led the session, which featured candid, first-hand automation experiences of four revenue cycle leaders:
Mark Norby, senior vice president, revenue cycle, University of Maryland Medical System
Charles Colvin, system vice president, revenue strategy, at Baptist Health
Paul Spencer, vice president, managed care and revenue cycle, at Froedtert Health
Jennifer Igel, chief insight and performance management, at Providence Health
The consensus among the panelists was that a fully automated revenue cycle is more hype than hope today and it is better to thoughtfully target parts of the revenue cycle with smart technology.
Insight
“We are in an environment where the expectation from the payors, the expectation from our customers, is an expectation of near perfection. We are expected to do so many tasks on the front end and get them right every time. To dot every ‘i,’ to cross every ‘t.’ It is so hard; it is a hard job. Automation is going to be a key as the demands evolve, as we have to do more and more tasks in the future, as we have to get so many things right.”
— Charles Colvin, System Vice President, Revenue Strategy, Baptist Health
Session 1
Revenue Integrity Intelligence
Kodiak revenue cycle manager Neeshali Odhav went one-on-one with Michelle Greame, assistant vice president for revenue integrity at Inova Health System, to talk about her effort to build a high-performance revenue integrity team. Greame and her team operate in the middle of the revenue cycle to proactively flag charge capture improvement opportunities and bring those opportunities to fruition. One secret to the team’s success is the diverse skill set of its members, which include clinical, coding, regulatory, and analytics specialists. Another asset is a group of in-house physician advisers that collaborates with the team to mitigate medical necessity claim denials before they happen or through peer-to-peer meetings with payors. Regardless of where the intervention occurs, it’s important to lead with the data, Greame said.
Insight
“We tend to see sometimes lots of touches on an account in order to get it out the door for proper billing. So, we are working on an initiative right now to decrease the amount of manual touches of an account. Our CFO has coined the term OHIO for Only Handle It Once.”
— Michelle Greame, Assistant Vice President for Revenue Integrity, Inova Health System
Session 2
Clinical Intelligence
Everyone talks about the importance of a clinically integrated supply chain. But what about a clinically integrated revenue cycle? This session made the case that clinically integrating the revenue cycle is as important if not more important than clinically integrating the supply chain to the strategic success of a hospital or health system. Megan Beasley, vice president, revenue cycle, at Kodiak, facilitated this session featuring Dennis Shirley and Angie Wilson Reis, vice president of revenue cycle and director of utilization management, respectively, at UnityPoint Health. Shirley and Reis shared lessons learned and secrets to the success of integrating clinicians into the system’s revenue cycle workflows. The end game is capturing all billable services provided by clinicians and being reimbursed accurately and on time by payors.
Insight
“Historically and across many organizations, revenue cycle functions are walled off from clinical teams. We maybe thought that we were saving the clinical teams from worrying about the revenue cycle. You treat the patients, and we’ll handle everything else. But by doing that, we lost key connection points that allowed us to understand the clinical business and the clinical people to understand the value their work brings to the financial side of the equation.”
— Dennis Shirley, Vice President of Revenue Cycle, UnityPoint Health
Session 3
Vendor Performance Intelligence
With revenue and margin pressures growing, claim denials and appeals increasing, and staff shortages continuing, many hospitals and health systems turn to third-party vendors to manage key revenue cycle workflows. How do hospitals and health systems know if their vendors are hitting the mark? This session, moderated by Matt Szaflarski, revenue cycle intelligence leader at Kodiak, offered practical advice shared by Jennifer Igel, chief, insight and performance management, at Providence Health, and Jacob (Jake) Collins, associate CFO, revenue cycle, at Denver Health. At the top of their list was establishing a formal vendor performance monitoring program complete with transparent performance metrics. The metrics should track where the provider is now, where the provider wants to be, and what the vendor is doing to get there.
Insight
“We traditionally have what we call the ‘hot hand.’ We usually have a vendor that we have aligned with that has end-to-end services that we can reach out should we need any of those services – for instance, if we see a sudden uptick in denials. They understand our process, our organization, and what we prefer from a relationship standpoint to do the work for us quickly rather than standing up a new or net new vendor for us.”
— Jake Collins, Associate CFO, Revenue Cycle, Denver Health
Session 4
Executive-Level Intelligence
The strained relationship between providers and payors dominated this panel discussion moderated by Colleen Hall, senior vice president, revenue cycle, at Kodiak. Sharing their candid thoughts on managing payor relationships were:
Charles Colvin, system vice president, revenue strategy, at Baptist Health
Kim Hodgkinson, Hospital System CFO
Melvin Eisele, founding partner and president at e3 Healthcare Solutions
Gary Simkus, vice president of finance analytics and systems at Universal Health Services
Their advice included keeping lines of communication open with payors no matter how tense situations get, sharing objective revenue cycle data with payors, and building joint operating committee scorecards to enable both sides to read from the same playbook.
Insight
“We’re turning internally to figure out ways we could build strategic partnerships between revenue cycle, managed care, and finance to drive that speed-to-insight to respond to the changing payor behaviors. It’s becoming more important to provide leaders with the right information at the right time to make those key decisions on whether you stay in network with certain payors.”
— Gary Simkus, Vice President of Finance Analytics and Systems, Universal Health Services
Closing Keynote
Healthcare Technology Intelligence
This closing keynote featured a lively debate over who – providers or payors – has the edge in technology as the strained relationship between the two traditional adversaries escalates. Eric Boggs, vice president, revenue cycle, at Kodiak Solutions, led the debate with Paul Horner, senior partner and national health payor lead with West Monroe, a digital services consulting firm, and Melisa Peterson, vice president of product management and business analytics at Knowtion Health, a provider revenue cycle management firm. (Knowtion was a platinum sponsor of this year’s virtual symposium.) Peterson said providers feel payors are ahead in the smart technology race because they have more data to build and feed artificial intelligence models and algorithms. Horner called it even with healthcare lagging behind other industries generally in digital transformation.
Insight
“Technology and data are never the problem. Technology can do what you want it to do. Data can do what you need it to do. It’s about getting the people in the room together to try to do the right things. That’s the challenge.”
— Paul Horner, Senior Partner and National Health Payor Lead, West Monroe
Bonus Segment
Kodiak 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Awards
Maintaining and improving revenue cycle performance in today’s volatile healthcare financial climate can be challenging for most hospitals and health systems. Still, it can be done with the right mix of leadership, strategy, workforce, and technology. Six health systems have the right mix, and Kodiak recognized them with a 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Award. The award is earned through performance on several revenue cycle key performance indicators tracked by Kodiak’s Payor Market Intelligence solution. The recipients of the 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Award are:
Banner Health
Baylor Scott & White
Cottage Health
Intermountain Health Peaks Region
Scripps Health
CHRISTUS Health
Colleen Hall, senior vice president, revenue cycle, at Kodiak, announced the recipients during the opening keynote of the virtual symposium.
Insight
“We congratulate the award recipients for their excellent work to ensure their health systems are paid appropriately for the vital care they deliver.”
— Colleen Hall, Senior Vice President, Revenue Cycle, Kodiak Solutions
Bonus Segment
Responding to the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack
The ransomware attack on Change Healthcare disrupted the healthcare system like no other cyberattack in recent memory. Kodiak led the industry discussion on the attack’s financial hit to providers and how it crippled the revenue stream they depend on to care for patients. Kodiak’s critical contribution to the discussion was objective financial data that showed that providers were suffering from delayed payments totaling $2 billion per week because of the breakdown in Change Healthcare’s claims processing systems. Colleen Hall, senior vice president, revenue cycle, at Kodiak, described the situation as “debilitating” in her remarks following the end of the opening keynote session. She said the Change Healthcare “tentacles are far-reaching” and that the attack’s impact “will be felt for months to come.”
Insight
“The impact will grow over time, even after claims processing returns to normal. We expect this interruption of claims processing to also increase insurance denials for medical necessity, prior authorization, and timely filing.”
— Colleen Hall, Senior Vice President, Revenue Cycle, Kodiak Solutions
Bonus Segment
Honoring Women's History Month with Kodiak Healthcare Women Connexxt
March was Women’s History Month, and women in healthcare finance are finding inspiration among their peers and from women everywhere. Kodiak Healthcare Women Connexxt asked attendees and presenters at this year’s virtual symposium about which women – past or present – inspire them in their work. The answers include Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Patricia Maryland, Oprah Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II, and J.K. Rowling. Who is this esteemed group inspiring? Watch this video to find out.
Insight
“The women that have inspired me are women that have functioned outside of the box.”
— Angie Wilson Reis, Director of Utilization Management, UnityPoint Health
Bonus Segment
Meet Kodiak Founder and CEO Derek Bang
What makes Derek Bang, founder and CEO, tick? How about wildlife photography? Or more specifically, taking close-up pictures of huge brown bears in the Alaskan wilderness by himself and without wearing bear spray or carrying a gun. (Spoiler alert: It’s the origin story of the Kodiak Solutions logo.) Watch this short, personal interview with Bang for his take on corporate culture, management philosophy, technology, books, podcasts, jazz, new revenue cycle hires, and playing sports when you’re 6 feet, 8 inches tall.
Insight
“It starts with taking care of your customer and taking care of your people. That will take care of everything else.”
— Derek Bang, Founder and CEO, Kodiak Solutions
In Closing
The theme of the 2024 Kodiak Solutions Healthcare Virtual Symposium was “exploring the next chapter in healthcare.” Revenue cycle leaders who missed the event or who want to review the resources can consider what’s possible, if not what’s next. A fully automated revenue cycle? Dynamic revenue integrity teams? A clinically integrated revenue cycle? Third-party vendors with particular skills sets they’ve acquired over a long period of time? Payors and providers sharing data to improve the revenue cycle for patients?
Based on the takeaways from the virtual symposium sessions and presenters, it’s all possible, especially with the technology-enabled services from Kodiak Solutions.