Community Health Systems, the largest publicly-held hospital company in the U.S., has decided to outsource its billing and practice management systems for physicians and replace them with a solution hosted by an outside vendor. CHS will roll out IT vendor athenahealth's solution to the 2,000 physicians with its corporate physician organization. This follows on steps taken by 13 additional CHS locations, which are already deploying or have finished implementing athenahealth's tools.
What makes this interesting, as I see it, is that even an organization with 18,000 beds and 17 hospitals doesn't see itself as having the resources or inside knowledge to handle billing as efficiently as it would like. If a hospital company this size is turning to outsourced billing and practice management--and relying on a vendors' knowledge of payer processes rather than its own--I think it's a safe bet that more large providers will follow in its footsteps.
To learn more about Chase's decision:
- read this Healthcare Finance News piece
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