Carolina Salazar Torres, Applications Analyst at Juno Health, recently sat with our editorial team to discuss why revenue cycle management remains a persistent challenge for hospitals, and how the EHR sitting at the center of their tech stack is often the most underutilized solution available.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Salazar Torres: Patient care is always the priority, but it's only half of the equation. Healthcare facilities also need to maintain financial organization and stability to support that care. But so many hospitals still accept a poor-performing revenue cycle as the status quo. The reason, more often than not, comes down to legacy processes that haven't been reviewed in decades.
RCM is an end-to-end workflow that starts before a patient even arrives and doesn't end until final balances are resolved. It accounts for the entire care journey, from scheduling and clinical encounters all the way to patient checkout. That's an enormous amount of complexity, and when it's managed the same way it was 30 years ago, problems are inevitable.
Three outdated patterns come up again and again. First, there's the reliance on paper. Continuing to use paper-based processes alongside an EHR disrupts staff workflows as they stop to track down physical files, resulting in lost time and productivity. Second, fragmented information. Coordinating across multiple disconnected systems from different departments and third parties makes it incredibly difficult to match patient information and share billing data accurately. And third, manual charge capture. Relying on manual data entry over automation slows the billing cycle and collections. The good news is that the most effective solution to all three of these problems is probably already sitting in the center of your tech stack.
Salazar Torres: That's exactly the right question. The EHR can act as a true financial engine — bridging the gap between patient care and prompt reimbursement — but most facilities aren't using it that way. They're using it for clinical documentation and leaving the financial potential largely untapped.
There are three areas where EHRs can make an immediate and meaningful difference. The first is workflow automation. Hospitals can integrate worklists directly into their EHR to control the flow of tasks to the right clinicians. For example, assigning users to specific payers like Medicare or Blue Cross. From there, one-click features, like clickable phone numbers, keep billing data on a single screen, and billing templates can automate charge capture based on selected services, which dramatically speeds up collections.
The second is compliance management. Effective RCM goes far beyond billing; it requires the whole organization to adhere to health regulations and internal processes. EHRs can support this by enabling custom bill holds that match specific billing rules, and by automating code updates, including pulling in new ICD-10 and CPT codes as they're released. This takes the burden off individual staff members and reduces the risk of costly errors.
The third is building a robust audit system. EHR-driven auditing allows hospitals to randomly select claims and email audit lists directly to staff. Monthly reporting then identifies workflow problems quickly, before those errors have a chance to affect hundreds of claims. Compared to the time-consuming, manual audit processes most hospitals rely on, this is a significant operational upgrade.
Salazar Torres: Honestly? Lack of training. Too many hospitals fail to use their EHR to its full potential because staff members simply don't understand how to use it properly. The technology is there. The workflows are there. But if your team doesn't know what's available to them, none of it matters.
The fix is committing to ongoing training across the workforce, so team members truly understand both the software and the specific RCM features and workflows it supports. But training alone isn't enough if communication breaks down along the way. Leaders need to actively communicate key changes — like workflow updates and software improvements — and explain the reason behind them. If you reduce a three-click process to one click, that's a real win for your staff. But they'll only appreciate and adopt it if someone takes the time to show them what changed and why it matters.
A hospital's financial success depends heavily on the technology that powers the rest of its operations. Every facility should reevaluate the software they already have. The untapped potential of your EHR might be the most cost-effective path to financial stability.
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