Invicta’s CEO Highlights 2021

What are some of the lessons learned and changes made at Invicta during 2021? And what is on your mind and in your toolkit as you look to 2022?
 


First, I want to heartily thank our clients, team members, and partners who have worked side-by-side with us throughout the entire year. And, welcome to our new clients, partners, and team members. I have said since Invicta was founded that we must have a culture of both creativity and discipline that is open to ideas that may very well challenge conventional workflows.

“Relentless Innovation” isn’t just an idea or a phrase here. It’s a key ingredient to driving modern strategies. To stay relevant, we must constantly improve with society’s changing needs and provide an incremental roadmap of success for our healthcare customers. The general business roadmap in 2021 – if I were to draw it – might look like a series of concentric circles shot through with the worst construction roadblocks imaginable. To expound on that analogy, I feel that we’ve all worn our seat belts, taken the curves needed with the respective aggression required, and we are well positioned for whatever comes our way in 2022. 

That said, below are key areas of focus that helped us thrive in 2021 and that we will continue to deploy in 2022. 

Refine Services and Solutions to Meet Needs and Trends

From a look-back perspective, Invicta’s first efforts introduced solutions using transformative technologies to support our Enrollment division. Our methodology and process used an evolving suite of Solutions and Services to amplify areas of work that have the highest return on investment and lowest cost impacts for Invicta as well as our clients. This nimble and flexible methodology greatly condensed the life cycle of research, product development, and implementation. And we’ve used this same exact process and philosophy to roll out new tools and resources this year.

In short, our Services began with Primary Enrollment, and we used our technological methodology and industry knowledge there to launch Secondary Enrollment, Denial Management, and Insurance Recovery. Essentially, we did the same thing with our Technology Solutions. We began with Medicare Eligibility reporting and analytics, and then grew that to include API Insurance Discovery, Eligibility & Verification, Claim Status, Out of State Medicaid, and Cash Posting. This growth strategy has been helpful as we evaluated various areas of RCM where we could really lead and compete. 

We have had to refine our existing services to meet challenges head on. As the entire Healthcare industry trended to higher rates of minimal patient contact engagement, our Enrollment team members who deal with patients and their families on the front lines had to adapt. For example, we saw a record number of isolation cases in 2021. Our team had to think critically about purposeful ways of engaging hospitalized patients. Engaging and interacting with uninsured patients at all points of registration and post-discharge is critical to achieving higher screening and enrollment outcomes. Coordination among entities (Patient Access, Social Workers, Case Management, & Government agencies) all committed to the patient’s application success was an area of focus. We coached our teams on how to best leverage our SMS outreach and electronic signature technology. Modern technology enabled connectivity systems are no longer a “nice-to-have” resource. They are an absolute necessity.

Collaborate to Combat Healthcare Equity Issues

Financial hardship for individual patients and their families has a direct impact on their healthcare providers. When hospital patients don’t have sufficient insurance coverage, they often can’t pay for medically necessary healthcare services. If patients can’t pay for services, providers are not compensated. And the research shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted existing disparities among racial, geographic, and many other systemic factors. Further, the SDoH data has shined the light on the connection between social isolation and patient access as a critical factor to be addressed. In fact, a recent Deloitte report estimates that these disparities have cost the United States more than $90 billion in excess medical costs and more than $40 million in lost productivity. 

Hospitals, health systems and their doctors and nurses serve people. Their number one goal is to diagnose and treat the patients so they can return home. We don’t believe that service providers – like Invicta – or carriers should second-guess the treatment plans of qualified hospital personnel. Consequently, we are committed to supporting our clients with robust integration of smart specialists and business intelligence. We consider it our duty to use technology as a driver to unearth every single resource available for healthcare patients, to help our clients deliver that information to their patients in any way that we can, and to use our experienced RCM team to serve up high quality reporting and administrative tasks. Everyone wins in this scenario. 

Acknowledge the Great Resignation

It is a fact that the Healthcare industry has seen an industry-wide shortage of staff this year, which has made it difficult for hospitals to achieve their financial performance. We have had a distinct advantage because our infrastructure has been built on secure, cloud-based products and services, allowing us to retain remote team members. Anything that can be done in an off-site, remote manner to deliver performance has been developed. Our teams across the United States demonstrated superb performance this year amidst many challenges. Changes in client protocols, unexpected resignations, staffing modifications, adoption of new performance tools, and sporadic patient volumes. 

We have invited and challenged our team members in every department across the company to be a part of how Invicta continually refines best practices. This involves everything from daily interactions, participating in surveys, as well as suggestions of solutions we can implement to streamline our client deliverables. We believe this has been a useful ingredient in retention of our highest performers, in addition to the employee engagement best practices we already had in place.

Manage and Synthesize Big Data

We all know that data is important. Yet, revenue cycle executives bemoan the continually evolving data sets used to measure performance and interpret results. Data is and must be the cornerstone of productivity. We need good information to make decisions and refine processes. Technology is essential to this process, and we heavily invested at Invicta this year to amplify our tech. 

We understand that our clients are providing medical care that is necessary: Every payment, even low dollar ones, should receive reimbursement. And in our patient-facing roles on behalf of those clients, we treat each patient with the utmost respect, creating a positive patient experience, because they are the center of our business. That said, regardless of the scope of work, we hold ourselves accountable for delivering data in a way that provides explanation and collaboration. We frequently hear from our clients and others in the industry that they receive reports with information that is not easy to digest and is thus meaningless. We must determine what we want to measure before we define how to measure it. This sounds simple. In fact, it can be complex. It is imperative to build systems and outline the qualitative and quantitative KPIs. Which brings me to my next point…

Plan, Execute, Measure

We have 6 repeatable constants that we established to measure performance. First, Invicta commits to quality by utilizing proven Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) practices to achieve consistent and high-quality deliverables. Second, we utilize technology to define operational metrics that monitor both the volume and quality of the work being performed. Third, we incorporate industry-wide metrics that make sense for our scope of service and integrate them into our standard set of reports. Fourth, we build in client-specific metrics as part of the implementation process, because no client is a mirror of another, and no hospital patient is the same as another. We aren’t selling silver bullets here. Fifth, we encourage symmetrical feedback from top to bottom, bottom to top and across departments. Finally, we look at keystrokes. How many steps does it take to get from the beginning to the end and which of these steps can be re-engineered through robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence? 

We’ve had to model this efficacy to help clients make the shifts to move repetitive activities to machines so that people can be problem-solvers and handle the nuances in our business. Have we made mistakes? Certainly. Does measurement help to ensure a mistake is swiftly corrected? Yes. Are we working on new and exciting advances for next year? Of course. Are we ready to see what 2022 brings our way? Absolutely!

If you’d like to bring Invicta’s services and solutions to your organization, contact us at info@invictahs.com for more information.  

LEARN MORE

What are some of the lessons learned and changes made at Invicta during 2021? And what is on your mind and in your toolkit as you look to 2022?
 


First, I want to heartily thank our clients, team members, and partners who have worked side-by-side with us throughout the entire year. And, welcome to our new clients, partners, and team members. I have said since Invicta was founded that we must have a culture of both creativity and discipline that is open to ideas that may very well challenge conventional workflows.

“Relentless Innovation” isn’t just an idea or a phrase here. It’s a key ingredient to driving modern strategies. To stay relevant, we must constantly improve with society’s changing needs and provide an incremental roadmap of success for our healthcare customers. The general business roadmap in 2021 – if I were to draw it – might look like a series of concentric circles shot through with the worst construction roadblocks imaginable. To expound on that analogy, I feel that we’ve all worn our seat belts, taken the curves needed with the respective aggression required, and we are well positioned for whatever comes our way in 2022. 

That said, below are key areas of focus that helped us thrive in 2021 and that we will continue to deploy in 2022. 

Refine Services and Solutions to Meet Needs and Trends

From a look-back perspective, Invicta’s first efforts introduced solutions using transformative technologies to support our Enrollment division. Our methodology and process used an evolving suite of Solutions and Services to amplify areas of work that have the highest return on investment and lowest cost impacts for Invicta as well as our clients. This nimble and flexible methodology greatly condensed the life cycle of research, product development, and implementation. And we’ve used this same exact process and philosophy to roll out new tools and resources this year.

In short, our Services began with Primary Enrollment, and we used our technological methodology and industry knowledge there to launch Secondary Enrollment, Denial Management, and Insurance Recovery. Essentially, we did the same thing with our Technology Solutions. We began with Medicare Eligibility reporting and analytics, and then grew that to include API Insurance Discovery, Eligibility & Verification, Claim Status, Out of State Medicaid, and Cash Posting. This growth strategy has been helpful as we evaluated various areas of RCM where we could really lead and compete. 

We have had to refine our existing services to meet challenges head on. As the entire Healthcare industry trended to higher rates of minimal patient contact engagement, our Enrollment team members who deal with patients and their families on the front lines had to adapt. For example, we saw a record number of isolation cases in 2021. Our team had to think critically about purposeful ways of engaging hospitalized patients. Engaging and interacting with uninsured patients at all points of registration and post-discharge is critical to achieving higher screening and enrollment outcomes. Coordination among entities (Patient Access, Social Workers, Case Management, & Government agencies) all committed to the patient’s application success was an area of focus. We coached our teams on how to best leverage our SMS outreach and electronic signature technology. Modern technology enabled connectivity systems are no longer a “nice-to-have” resource. They are an absolute necessity.

Collaborate to Combat Healthcare Equity Issues

Financial hardship for individual patients and their families has a direct impact on their healthcare providers. When hospital patients don’t have sufficient insurance coverage, they often can’t pay for medically necessary healthcare services. If patients can’t pay for services, providers are not compensated. And the research shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted existing disparities among racial, geographic, and many other systemic factors. Further, the SDoH data has shined the light on the connection between social isolation and patient access as a critical factor to be addressed. In fact, a recent Deloitte report estimates that these disparities have cost the United States more than $90 billion in excess medical costs and more than $40 million in lost productivity. 

Hospitals, health systems and their doctors and nurses serve people. Their number one goal is to diagnose and treat the patients so they can return home. We don’t believe that service providers – like Invicta – or carriers should second-guess the treatment plans of qualified hospital personnel. Consequently, we are committed to supporting our clients with robust integration of smart specialists and business intelligence. We consider it our duty to use technology as a driver to unearth every single resource available for healthcare patients, to help our clients deliver that information to their patients in any way that we can, and to use our experienced RCM team to serve up high quality reporting and administrative tasks. Everyone wins in this scenario. 

Acknowledge the Great Resignation

It is a fact that the Healthcare industry has seen an industry-wide shortage of staff this year, which has made it difficult for hospitals to achieve their financial performance. We have had a distinct advantage because our infrastructure has been built on secure, cloud-based products and services, allowing us to retain remote team members. Anything that can be done in an off-site, remote manner to deliver performance has been developed. Our teams across the United States demonstrated superb performance this year amidst many challenges. Changes in client protocols, unexpected resignations, staffing modifications, adoption of new performance tools, and sporadic patient volumes. 

We have invited and challenged our team members in every department across the company to be a part of how Invicta continually refines best practices. This involves everything from daily interactions, participating in surveys, as well as suggestions of solutions we can implement to streamline our client deliverables. We believe this has been a useful ingredient in retention of our highest performers, in addition to the employee engagement best practices we already had in place.

Manage and Synthesize Big Data

We all know that data is important. Yet, revenue cycle executives bemoan the continually evolving data sets used to measure performance and interpret results. Data is and must be the cornerstone of productivity. We need good information to make decisions and refine processes. Technology is essential to this process, and we heavily invested at Invicta this year to amplify our tech. 

We understand that our clients are providing medical care that is necessary: Every payment, even low dollar ones, should receive reimbursement. And in our patient-facing roles on behalf of those clients, we treat each patient with the utmost respect, creating a positive patient experience, because they are the center of our business. That said, regardless of the scope of work, we hold ourselves accountable for delivering data in a way that provides explanation and collaboration. We frequently hear from our clients and others in the industry that they receive reports with information that is not easy to digest and is thus meaningless. We must determine what we want to measure before we define how to measure it. This sounds simple. In fact, it can be complex. It is imperative to build systems and outline the qualitative and quantitative KPIs. Which brings me to my next point…

Plan, Execute, Measure

We have 6 repeatable constants that we established to measure performance. First, Invicta commits to quality by utilizing proven Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) practices to achieve consistent and high-quality deliverables. Second, we utilize technology to define operational metrics that monitor both the volume and quality of the work being performed. Third, we incorporate industry-wide metrics that make sense for our scope of service and integrate them into our standard set of reports. Fourth, we build in client-specific metrics as part of the implementation process, because no client is a mirror of another, and no hospital patient is the same as another. We aren’t selling silver bullets here. Fifth, we encourage symmetrical feedback from top to bottom, bottom to top and across departments. Finally, we look at keystrokes. How many steps does it take to get from the beginning to the end and which of these steps can be re-engineered through robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence? 

We’ve had to model this efficacy to help clients make the shifts to move repetitive activities to machines so that people can be problem-solvers and handle the nuances in our business. Have we made mistakes? Certainly. Does measurement help to ensure a mistake is swiftly corrected? Yes. Are we working on new and exciting advances for next year? Of course. Are we ready to see what 2022 brings our way? Absolutely!

If you’d like to bring Invicta’s services and solutions to your organization, contact us at info@invictahs.com for more information.  

LEARN MORE