Accounts receivable process improvement for a public hospital

A public hospital had a ‘hunch’ that significant working capital was locked up in accounts receivable through process inefficiencies

The details of the billing cycle from patient discharge to invoice paid were unknown and lacked transparency through all levels in the organisation

Developed detailed process maps for all upstream processes

Collated various data sources to construct an analytical picture of time, value and variation around each node in the process

Conducted interviews coupled with field observations to validate data

Brainstormed and prioritised project opportunities to bridge the identified issues

Developed detailed project scopes

Delivered 8 detailed project scopes to reduce working capital by $1.4M and obtain annual savings of $1.3M including:

Prioritisation system for high value episodes

Electronic record keeping to improve EFT efficiency

Debottlenecking current processes to improve EFT efficiency

Improvements to radiology admission timing system

Optimising radiology billing turn around time via electronic billing

Project enablers including cascaded metrics from CEO to the floor along with visual management were also detailed to improve analysis repeatability and project sustainability.