Danielle Cuthbertson, Vice President, Revenue Cycle Management at Gen4 Dental Partners, believes strongly in the holistic nature of RCM and the technology that accelerates its performance.
During Amplify 2023, an industry event focused on innovative technology and thought leadership in the DSO and high-end private practice space, Ms. Cuthbertson described challenges specific to the doctor-partner model of dental support organization (DSO). She also shared strategies for improving efficiency, and what RCM means to the big picture - for patient, provider, and the organization as a whole.
“One of the things we forget about revenue cycle is that it’s not just about collecting money on the front-end, it’s making sure we’re driving revenue on the operations side,” she explained.
Ms. Cuthbertson singled out payment posting as an area where automation has a positive impact on efficiency, eliminating what she described as a “time-suck.”
“We partnered with Zentist for AI automation of EOBs and, why that was important for me, [is that] payment posting is the time-suck. To automate that and get payment data as quickly as we can, is fantastic.”
she said.
Automation is particularly effective in a multi location environment. “We all have disparate systems. No one system is the same,” Ms. Cuthbertson said during Amplify, describing the Gen4 model. Doctors own their own practices and therefore bring their own systems with them, including revenue cycle management processes. Tools like Remit AI bring unity and efficiency to a patchwork of systems, improving overall financial outcomes.
To Ms. Cuthbertson, it all comes full circle.
“RCM is operations 2.0 because everything we do is revenue cycle. Everything we do from the moment someone looks at us on a website is revenue cycle. So we’re no longer RCM and ops, we’re ops 2.0.”
