Hear how revenue cycle staff burnout is different these days and what it takes to solve it.
What is an area you're focusing on to support retention of revenue cycle staff?
Chelsea Raukar: "Not only do the frontline (clinical) staff have challenges and risk of burnout, but I think that there's a risk of burnout in our roles with our staff in revenue cycle as well. There are a lot of challenges: A lot of things that need to be adapted to on a dime. Every payer wants something different. There are regulatory changes where we're trying to communicate to operations, ‘Yes, you can do telehealth on this, and no, you can no longer do telehealth on this,’ and trying to articulate the proper way to bill, and at the same time, integrate all of those complex edits into our system so that we can automate and retain our quality. These days, there are a lot of high-urgency changes that need to be adapted to. Also, I think for as much benefit as remote work brings to us, there's also an element of burnout that we're finding there as well because some people don't know when to stop or detach themselves from work or take a break. Sometimes we're like, ‘Hey, I just realized it's four o'clock and I haven't had a drink of water or gone to the bathroom yet today because I've been sitting at my desk meeting after meeting.’ We've lost that ability to leave one physical space, walk down to the next building in the hospital structure, and enter into a new meeting space. We used to have to build 10 to 15 minutes in between meetings, and now they're very easily scheduled back-to-back. If you try to intentionally leave space in between meetings, somebody sneaks in and pops something on your calendar, you're getting pulled away, you're getting pinged, you're getting emails. So it's a different kind of burnout that we're up against, and I think that the best way that we can combat that and try to adapt to this new world is to really listen to our staff and what they're telling us. Create platforms for them to give us feedback on what's going well and what's not going well, and then listen to them and put action and strategy to some of the challenges that they're facing so that they know they’re heard. It's new times, let's invent what the new normal is together and conquer some of these challenges together.”
