When Nordic announced its acquisition of The Claro Group’s Revenue Cycle Transformation practice in January, we were excited to find out that we were already working together on a project. We checked in with Alex Cutler, a legacy Nordic consultant working with the Revenue Cycle Transformation team, to hear how the acquisition was going from the ground level.
Whenever a company goes through an acquisition, there are some nerves and hesitations about how the teams will work together to provide the best possible client service.
That’s why I wanted to take the chance to talk about a project I’ve been working on with Nordic’s new Revenue Cycle Transformation practice – a project that has shown me the incredible benefits of combining two teams with different expertise to solve a problem.
I recently started working with Nordic’s Revenue Cycle Transformation practice on a referrals project with a large health system in the Pacific Northwest.
The revenue cycle team has been working with our client partner for over a year on a project to tackle referral leakage. The system was losing referrals to other organizations, and incoming referrals weren’t being scheduled, which meant the system was losing out on potential revenue. Our revenue cycle team (at the time, part of The Claro Group) determined that the system was losing about $2.4 million a year to this referral leakage.
The team was brought in to tackle the issue and help everyone “speak the same language” when it came to referral workflows. The biggest problem was that different departments were using slightly different workflows and processes, so referrals would often be submitted but not received. These slight “cracks” in the system grew over the years, until there were large groups of referrals that were never being seen.
To stem the leakage, our team has been working with the system to standardize revenue cycle workflows and assign operational ownership for the referrals process.
In solving these problems, it has been incredibly useful to have expertise from the traditional Nordic side and from our new Revenue Cycle Transformation team members. The Revenue Cycle Transformation practice has a deep understanding of revenue cycle operations, and they’ve taken ownership of the project from scope to go-live. They have an inherent awareness of the decision-making process, and they know how to communicate changes in a way that will help the team adopt them long-term. On the other side, I’m able to bring a technical aptitude and knowledge of Epic that helps us be smart and efficient about our changes to the system.
In some cases, I think consulting teams struggle when they bring Epic expertise but don’t have a keen insight into operations. With our combined team, we understand both the intricacies of revenue cycle operations and the complexities of the EHR.
On a more personal level, I’ve found our new Revenue Cycle Transformation colleagues to be incredibly intelligent, adaptable, professional, and energetic. When issues or concerns arise, we’re able to resolve them quickly and productively. And we’re already on the same page about our shared values, which guide us to do what’s right, listen to each other, take ownership, and grow together.
I look forward to seeing our clients benefit from this seamless partnership, and I’m grateful to the Revenue Cycle Transformation practice for welcoming me onto their high-performing team.
