Why Claim Timeliness Is the Foundation of Revenue Cycle Performance
Chris Spady opens with a joke about not mentioning cash first, before naming the metric he actually watches every morning: candidate for billing, Erlanger Health's term for what functions as DNFB (days not final billed). Revenue cycle is process driven, and the question Spady returns to daily is what did not go out on time, why it did not, and whether each delay was avoidable or not. His view is that timeliness is a prerequisite: you cannot reach the forefront of revenue cycle performance if you are not consistently billing on time, and direction of movement matters as much as where you stand today.
Key Takeaway
Billing timeliness is the foundational metric that enables everything else in revenue cycle. Before analyzing cash, denials, or any downstream outcome, leaders need a daily answer to what did not go out on time and why, and whether that gap was avoidable, because that discipline is what separates organizations at the forefront from those that follow.
“You can’t be at the forefront of revenue cycle metrics if you’re not on time. You have to start there and you really have to understand: of what didn’t go out, why, what can we do about it, is it avoidable, is it unavoidable.”
Chris Spady, Senior Vice President of Revenue Cycle, Erlanger Health
2:02Why RCM Starts with Mission and Partnership, Not the Billing Back End
73 secWhy Revenue Cycle Leaders Review Candidate for Billing Daily
2:30Why Revenue Cycle Success Starts with People Before KPIs
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