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CareMetrics is the most advanced analytics tool in post acute and long term care. This sophisticated new suite not only displays valuable data on your long term care software dashboards, but also represents it in the form of dynamic and visually-stunning graphs. That means that your team can make data-driven decisions and save time on the collection, formatting, and analysis of actionable data. 

By using a series of visualization techniques, this analytics tool gives your organization a financial chart that will tie together technological sources on one screen. Both clinicians and financial managers will be able to drill in and engage with the analytics relevant to them all in one centralized location

This democratization of data made possible by our visual analytics will help you avoid bottle-necking; the finance team no longer has to tell you what does or does not need to be collected. This is because a series of visualization techniques make it easy for your facility’s owner to quickly understand what is going on. And your administrator will know how to interpret the data and act accordingly. 

Using the CareMetrics Executive Dashboard, you can turn your best practices into analytics that anyone can understand. Instead of waiting for the financial department to run reports, anyone on your team can use our dashboard to interpret the data from Accounts Receivable. That allows owners and administrators to move things along more quickly and shift their focus to assigning resources for their staff and infrastructure. 

The General Tab

Get an overview of your organization. View census by pay time, AR Aging over the last thirty days, and AR Aging by Category. You will also be able to see quick stats like your census days, hold days, total days, and revenue from commercial, guarantor, Medicaid, Medicare, and miscellaneous sources.

Generate precise and customized census reports and organize information by payor type, admissions source, or year-over-year variance across both admissions and discharge. When viewing by payor type, you may notice that higher payors, like Medicare, are not being prioritized enough. This means that, when presented with options, you may decide to begin accepting Medicare patients over others. 

Keep track of residents who stayed at your facility. This, alone, will save your facility thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours annually that were previously spent on reporting. 

A view of CareMetrics, an EHR data analytics dashboard.
View census days, hold days, and total days.

View the census days, hold days, and total days under the General tab.

Census days are measured in accordance with Medicare’s standards, or, the midnights that a patient or resident stays at the facility. By knowing how many “heads in beds” you had the previous day, you can better calculate your census budget. And when you know what your payor types are, you can better prepare for discharges; if you lose a big part of your census from Medicare in one day, you will then need to focus on admitting new patients from Medicare. Hold days, meanwhile, are important because they allow you to know who is willing to pay out of pocket (as a guarantor payor) to save their spot in the facility.

You can also view your Census by Pay Type Yesterday, meaning, the amounts you are making from various payor types to get an idea of the pay mix. For instance, while your private payors may pay at stable (lower) rates, Medicaid has more variance, so it is valuable to know what percent is coming from where. You can then strive to keep your payors at a certain percentage of your overall payments, especially when Medicaid pays better and you want to keep a particular minimum of residents using that payment type. Further, certain payor types indicate that residents will be there long term. Thus, this information gives facilities the opportunity to reevaluate how, for instance, their skilled nursing fares when compared to their base. This will prevent major fluctuations in the census.

The Census Dashboard

You will be able to compare the current year to the previous year to see if your census numbers have trended upwards or downwards. You can do the same for discharges, meaning, observe the year-to-year variance. You can then drill in to see admissions and discharges in various periods, like the last three, six, nine, or twelve months. And you can see the admissions that come from payor types as well.

You can use the Admissions by payor information to learn more about your census. For instance, if you have a high number of Medicare admissions, you will know that many of your new residents will be discharged quickly, perhaps as early as 20 days, depending on their second payor. That may move you to try to increase admissions from another payor type, like private pay or Medicaid admissions, as they tend to stay long term. Thus, these graphs are a reflection of how well and how smart a facility is marketing itself.

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The census dashboard allows you to compare your current year to the previous year.

You can also use the Admissions by Type – Past 7 Days graph to help determine marketing strategies. For instance, if you have been receiving a high number of people from Medicare and you notice that they are coming from hospitals after suffering from orthopedic issues, you can decide to reach out to other hospitals and give them a breakdown of the outcomes at your facility. And the Census by Payor Type for Period allows you to observe year-over-year improvements or declines.

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View Admissions by Type – Past 7 Days.

Drilling in to Yesterday Census by Facility will display the number of people in beds in particular facilities. You can then click to view the details of those residents.

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View your Yesterday Census by Facility to see how many beds are filled in your buildings.

Gather Data From Your Financial Modules and Compare Results

The CareMetrics Executive Dashboard will increase your facility’s economical efficiency by aggregating all of your financial data in one easy-to-use screen in which you can seamlessly navigate data related to cash flow and census in real time. This means you will be able to quickly identify trends in aging and billing to improve your revenue cycle management. 

Gain immediate access to Day Sales Outstanding, Receipts Metrics, Deposits, Adjustments, and AR Aging. There is no longer the need to manually gather that information, analyze it, organize it into appropriate categories, and convert it into a graph. Run reports for multiple facilities to determine their financial health. You can check to see that the numbers match financial accountability. Search a specific range of time to find outstanding sales or see how quickly you are getting paid. Once you determine a metric for your organization’s buildings, you can then investigate the facilities that are not up to standard and identify payors who are not submitting remittances in a timely fashion.  

The A/R (Accounts Receivable) Tab

rcm dashboard by payer by month
View AR Aging by month, payor type, and time period.

By using our visual representations, you will be able to keep aging under control and know when and how to escalate collection efforts. Viewing aging by time period helps you determine which payors to pursue.

Sometimes, it may simply be that a resident is past due because he or she has passed away and the family is not inclined to pay the remaining balance. Or, you may notice a trend in managed care claims not being paid because you are not meeting the conditions of the provider, like including an authorization number, completing a notification of admission, or authorizing service. Meanwhile, if you notice that certain outstanding charges are approaching a year, you will need to prioritize them so that they do not fall outside the period of timely filing. 

Look at the AR Days Oustanding by Month to see how much is outstanding from each month. Because you cannot start billing until the start of the next month, you will often look to the outstanding amount from two months before. And if something stands out from a few months ago, you will look into it and decide whether or not it needs to be written off.

The stack chart with the AR Days Outstanding by Month and Payor Type will allow you to see which payors are responsible for outstanding amounts at different points in time. You could then double click on the column to see the breakdown and identify an individual who owes an exceptional amount of money. So if, for instance, you see that Blue Cross Blue Shield is the main offender, you will have to provide direction on how to collect from them.

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View AR aging over 90 days by payor type and in terms of varying amounts due.

By viewing the AR Days Oustanding by Facility for Last 12 Months, you will be able to compare facilities side-by-side to evaluate their performances.

RCM dashboard AR days outstanding
You can view AR days outstanding for the last 12 months by facility to decide which building deserves your attention.
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View AR aging that excludes the last 30 days, or, payments that have potentially not been processed yet.
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Days Sales Oustanding allows you to see which facilities are doing a poor job of collections.

Use our graphs of your Days Sales Oustanding (DSO) to see how quickly you are collecting on your billables. You will generally hope to see a DSO of 60 days or less. Various facilities will be represented by different colors in the graphs. When you notice which facilities are not collecting in a timely fashion, you can then move to collect your reimbursement for services already rendered.

You can also view your Month End Close Aging data to make final assessments, check to see if things are in order, ensure that your UB04 billing forms are error-free, and get those out to the payor in a timely fashion.

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View Month End Close Aging to make a final round of checks.

The Accounts Payable (AP) Tab

You can easily see how much each facility owes to each source in the AP Aging Summary. Then, you can look at the AP Aging by Category to see how far out payments are for various facilities and charges. This will help you decide when and whether to make payments. For instance, you may realize that you cannot spend beyond a certain amount due to payroll concerns and will delay certain payments or a portion of them.

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View how much you owe to whom and then drill in to get the details.

Then you can look at your AP Payments by Month to see how much has been paid on a month-by-month basis and compare it with previous years. You can also view AP Aging by Facility and >30 Days to see the vendors that you must pay for expenses that are late at each facility among the top ten highest in late charges. You can then call to ask why their payments are late. You may see one facility on the list of top 10 multiple times, as the list consists of individual APs or bills. You can then determine that such a facility is a problem building.

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View AP Payments by Month and AP Aging by Facility and >30 Days.

You can also view your AP Vendors by Top 20 (Past 12 Months) to see which facilities are being paid the most. You may find that you are paying more to a particular vendor than you expected.

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View AP Open Invoiced by Top 20 or AP Vendors by Top 20 over the last 12 months.

Then look at the AP Payments by Month and Facility chart to see which facilities have higher expenses for certain months. You may see a spike (like in the example below), you can drill in to see what is going on. It may be the result of a renewal or other large expense.

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Graph of AP Payments by Month and Facility.

Receipts

Here you can track cash receipts, charges, receivables, and deposits. Stay on top of your gross revenue by looking at the cash receipts for a particular month organized into:

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See which payors you have collected the most from in the current month.
  • Commercial – The payor you are billing
  • Guarantor
  • Medicaid
  • Medicare
  • Miscellaneous
  • Total amount

Based on your census averages, you will be able to tell whether or not you have a billing issue by looking at the cash receipts by pay type for the current month. You may also find that there were problems with the admissions process. As a result, you can direct your attention to a particular payor.

Cash Receipts by Payor Type demonstrates the money that has been collected, so by looking at these graphs, you will know how much “money in the bank” your organization has, even if it has not been confirmed yet. You can also view Bank Deposits to see how much has been put into the bank this year compared with the previous year.

View your Miscellaneous Cash Receipts by Calendar Year to see what was received from unexpected payor sources. This can include meal tickets, medical record charges, or other revenue that you might not always expect to receive. This also includes quality payments that are paid on a quarterly basis.

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View your Miscellaneous Cash Receipts by Calendar Year.

You can then scroll down to see the top 15 sources for miscellaneous receipts as well as adjustments, or writeoffs. So any money that you decide not to collect will be visible in that graph. And if insurance overpaid you by a certain amount, that will show up as well.

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View miscellaneous receipts sources and adjustments.

You can view also view cash receipts over lengthier periods of time (more than a year) by:

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View cash receipts and bank deposits by time period or payor type.
  • Payor type – You can view by payor to see where your system is broken. If the payor is Medicare, you may look at your PDPM reimbursement and the activities of your MDS nurse. A review may determine that they are not sufficiently reviewing previous or current diagnoses, previous or current medications, or the care you are administering. Meanwhile, if you simply are not getting paid, you may have to review the central billing office. It could be the case that they are delaying the processing of reimbursement.
  • Facility – Look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) for various facilities to see how they stack up. Just as there are KPIs pertaining to the care provided for residents, there are financial KPIs, or, your ability to collect money, that help indicate what success looks like. By using CareMetrics, an Accounts Receivable dashboard or KPI for Accounts Receivable, you will identify focus buildings and better determine when and how to act (more below). 
  • Resident – Once you have noticed a problem with a facility, you will then need to drill down into the list of residents to see which ones need to be prioritized. Further, you will be able to analyze private collections and determine how best to pressure an office manager who is consistently behind. 

With that information, you can:

Compare facilities – By gaining a top level view of performance—admissions, discharges, and AR Days outstanding—you will quickly realize which buildings are the most successful. Your regional directors can then investigate and speak with the relevant administrator about the nature of admissions, satisfaction surveys, and operations.

admissions by sourse
Visual demonstration of Admissions by Sources (Top 10) – Past Year.

Identify focus buildings – Locating the issues with focus buildings—facilities that are underperforming—allows you to then look at their census budget, eliminate excess expenses, and improve efficiency. By using CareMetrics, you will more quickly be able to recognize discrepancies and determine a course of action based on highly-informed analytics. Our advanced analytical visual representations will show you when the revenue stream is lagging for certain buildings, when admissions are lower, and when discharges are higher. You can look back at cash receipts instantly to compare the numbers on a monthly basis. Once you have decided where the problem lies, you can then approach the facility’s administrator and inform him or her that the building is among your top five focus clients. You can then inquire as to the billing process and sources and begin a review.

Observe trend analysis for the purpose of predictive modeling – Use a year-over-year comparison of adjustments and cash receipts to determine reasonable goals for your organization moving forward. And stay ahead of future collections issues by looking back at previous periods. When looking at the prior year, you may notice that collections issues occurred during a particular month, and that can impact how you approach the same month this year. 

The RCM Dashboard

RCM dashboard free
View AR, census, and more for one facility in the RCM dashboard.

Hosted customers do not need to pay for the RCM Dashboard. It comes absolutely free of charge. While the CareMetrics Executive Dashboard described above has more features and advanced graphs, some single facility organizations may not find them necessary and instead choose to stick with the free RCM Dashboard.

To activate the RCM Dashboard, which functions as an Accounts Receivable KPI dashboard, at the facility level, simply go to Applications Security and enable the security rights for the RCM Dashboard. This will allow you to view

  • AR aging by time period, payor type, or resident. You can then drill down into payor types to see a list of payors that fall under the categories of Medicare, Medicaid, Commercial, or Guarantor as well as the individual residents covered by those payors.
  • Receipts by plan, payor type, or resident
  • Adjustments by pay type or payor
  • Census levels by pay type or level of care

Contact us to learn how to get CareMetrics configured in your system today.