Jake Morris is a managing director with McKinnis Consulting Services (MCS) and was a founding member of the firm in 2009. MCS provides revenue cycle assessment, strategy, and optimization assistance to health care providers. HCB News spoke to him about the benefits of upgrading to a hospital information system (HIS) platform – and the importance of a clear game plan and unified approach to implementing change.

HCB News: In your experience, what are the benefits to a health system converting to a next generation HIS platform?

Jake Morris: When health systems adopt a HIS platform, they hope to bring in the revenues they’ve already earned as quickly as possible and also uncover new opportunities to reduce costs.



By establishing a system-wide patient medical record integrated with revenue cycle functions, organizations hope to realize benefits through improved quality of service, streamlined flow of patient information, reduction of bolt-on and third-party technology, efficient resource utilization, and increased management transparency. They expect that adopting an integrated HIS platform will ultimately lead to cost reduction opportunities and enhanced revenue realization.

HCB News: But we’ve heard that the conversion to a next generation HIS platform can actually present a significant risk to an organization’s revenue cycle. What do you attribute this to?

JM: During an initial roll-out, any number of problems can disrupt revenue cycle operations—charge entry challenges, revenue capture and reconciliation issues, unbilled backlogs, claims processing delays, remittance posting issues, etc. Regardless which of these problems is the most acute, the risk of an increase in accounts receivable and customer service volume is almost a given, at least initially.

HCB News: Why, do you think?

JM: In our experience, revenue cycle performance issues are typically traceable to gaps in strategic thinking. Some organizations don’t have an implementation strategy focused on operational outcomes. Others didn’t coordinate their operational and their technical resources. This includes defining areas of responsibility, and leveraging technology to improve revenue cycle processes.

Some of these gaps seem simple, but they really require a broad perspective on the organization’s power structure. Who is the most natural fit for a given task? Deciding who owns what and assigning clear areas of responsibility are crucial steps that are often mismanaged during implementation.

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