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Outsourcing: Ensure top vendor performance

Patient Financial Services Weekly Advisor, March 26, 2004

There are several components to hiring the right vendor, including your responsibility to ask the right questions, says Sandra J. Wolfskill, FHFMA, president of Wolfskill & Associates in Chardon, OH. Establishing a straightforward, solid reputation with the candidate right off the bat will place you in good stead for a mutually beneficial working relationship.

Temporary opportunities could include hiring someone to manage AR cleanup, self-pay campaigns, and coding backlog resolution. Long-term strategies could include outsourcing self-pay processing, small-balance insurance follow-up, and central business office procedures.

Before you sign on, it's crucial to define the vendor's performance expectations. Be sure to outline:

1. Specific terms within the contract: Make sure their RFP response goes into the contract

2. Mutually agreed-upon measurements: How do you determine success and failure

3. Ability to audit results: Specific data requirements and timing to aid the audit

4. Requirement to report results in a specified time frame: Sample reports and formats set in advance

5. Conflict resolution: Mutual requirements including arbitration, if appropriate

6. Incentive clauses: Rewards to better-than-predicted performance, but within compliance standards

7. Penalty clauses: Applicable to both parties and fairly established

Wolfskill can be reached at swolfskill@cs.com.

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