Even financially struggling hospitals need to update their revenue-cycle-management systems in order to work with multi-provider bundles, shared savings or other complex payment models.

Jay Sultan, principal strategy adviser at Edifecs, a health IT company, told Becker’s Hospital Review that using  antiquated RCM systems to add the new data sources and analytics needed to validate inbound revenue is like “trying to deliver the functionality of a modern EHR using a typewriter.”

“Payment reform is driving CMS, Medicaid and commercial payers to alter the revenue cycle, with a larger portion of provider revenue driven by performance elements outside of a traditional RCM system’s capability,” he added.

He told the news service that hospitals should prioritize technology investments based on bottom-line projections. In some hospitals,  he said, “current RCM technology and the processes that it drives are so antiquated that maintaining the system costs more than the revenue assurance/enhancement it delivers.”