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- This - Is Chanel Bunger
with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast
and I am recording live at the eighth annual Beck's Health
IT Digital health and RCM conference in Chicago.
Right now I'm sitting
with Carol Yarborough from the UCSF Health System.
Carol, thank you so much for joining me today.
Can you take a moment and please introduce yourself
and tell us a bit about your background?
- Of course. Thank you so much for having me.
Uh, Carol Yarborough, I'm the business operations manager
for, uh, the telehealth resource center at uc San Francisco.
Uh, my background started in the legal field where I worked
for 20 years prior to coming on over to the healthcare side.
So I quickly moved into compliance and auditing
and then decided maybe clinical guidance
and clinical operations to be more fun.
That was okay, .
So I went back to compliance and,
but then came over to the telehealth side of things
and I've just been having a blast for the last eight years.
- Awesome. Thank you so much.
And what is your growth strategy for the next year or two?
- Our growth strategy is to keep our ears
and eyes open for the next big thing.
Uh, when I spoke on this podcast last year,
I really was kind of emphasizing RPM
as the next new thing and I was sort of excited about it,
but then realized to quickly implement it
and get devices out
to patients takes a lot more coordination
that can be homegrown by an enterprise as big
as UCSF, although we are partnering
with other ucs to do that.
But I think RPM is gonna be very important
for quality-based care as we move forward
in different models of payment from CMS
and the different Medicaids.
The next new thing, we just have to keep our eyes
and ears open again as I repeat myself for anything new
that CMS is gonna turn as virtual care
as opposed to telehealth.
Uh, now that the pandemic is purported to be over,
the emphasis is going to be on assessing
how much money is being taken out
of the Medicare Entitlement Fund
and funneled into patient care through telehealth resources
or what they term CMS Telehealth.
So when they make that assessment, they are going
to pull back and have the payments only going to patients
who receive telehealth services in rural
sta rural statistic areas
and not metropolitan statistical areas.
And they will no longer be providing telehealth
to patients in their homes
unless you're a behavioral health, uh,
patient or beneficiary.
So concentrating on
what we can term virtual as opposed to telehealth
will be the next big thing for people certainly in my area.
- Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And moving forward, can you tell us about the most exciting
and impact of initiative
or project that you're working on right now?
- Right now, just assessing
what the insurance companies are gonna pay
for in 2024 is not exciting, but it is impactful.
I think the most recent thing that we implemented
that is gonna have a lot of, well will mean a lot
of many good things for patients at UCSF in the pain
management clinic is that we've rolled out the pain
management codes, which are monthly, uh, codes that our
pain doctors
and providers can track a patient's
pain assessment over a month, submit the data to CMS
through documentation and of course invoicing
and then build that, keeping the patient out of the clinic
and in their homes and thus freeing up
for more acute patients that have new onset uh, pain
symptoms, conditions to get into our clinics
and build up greater access to our pain management doctors.
- And that's better for the patient too,
because don't you heal better at home rather than in a
clinic or at a hospital?
- Absolutely. Everybody wants to stay home.
Uhhuh , including myself,
I don't know if I can ever leave the couch
and go into an office again,
but I can try if I'm asked to .
- Got it. And, uh, thank you so much
for your time here today.
But before you go, one last question.
What is the most important thing healthcare executives
should do now to make sure
that their organizations are successful in the future?
- Really concentrating on clean claims, going out the door,
making sure you've got your claim edits in place.
Sounds so exciting. Uh,
and partnering with the correct people to, to do so.
And that means front desk through the, the providers
backend claims processing
and a quicker turnaround in denials would be awesome.
And I know it doesn't sound exciting, but it is.
I know we can all proselytize about clean claims
and getting paid right away,
but you know, we're seeing the patients,
we have the volume back, we have the surgeries back.
Getting payment as quickly as possible to keep
a hospital viable and in the community is
probably the most important thing we can do right now.
- Got it. Well, Carol, thanks again for joining me today.
This is a delightful conversation. Appreciate it, .
Thank you, Chanel. Thank you.
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