Nearly 75% of Health Systems Report Active Technology Deployments in Revenue Cycle Operations During Pandemic

South San Francisco, Calif. – April 29, 2021 — AKASA™, the only Unified Automation™ company for healthcare revenue cycle management, released results of a national survey designed to assess deployment of technology solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic in revenue cycle operations at hospitals and health systems across the U.S. According to the survey, about 75 percent of health systems had active technology deployments during the pandemic. Nearly 40 percent of health systems and hospitals were able to use fully remote deployment processes to keep projects on track despite social distancing and/or quarantine requirements. More than 35 percent of health systems experienced project delays and 90 percent of these delays lasted 3 to 6 months or longer.

The survey was commissioned by AKASA and conducted through the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s (HFMA) Pulse Survey program. The survey was fielded between December 17, 2020 and Feb 5, 2021 among more than 350 chief financial officers and revenue cycle leaders at hospitals and health systems across the United States.

Traditional approaches to deploying automation or other technology tools typically require consultants to shadow employees to document workflows and processes. Social distancing requirements significantly limited the ability to shadow staff. As a result, implementation timelines slowed or projects were paused altogether. Revenue cycle leaders are prioritizing the ability of technology partners to deploy their solutions rapidly and remotely.

“The pandemic served as a forcing function for many organizations that may have been hesitant to deploy technology solutions using remote processes in the past. In this regard, healthcare executives have demonstrated strong leadership and the ability to adapt in uncertain times,” said Varun Ganapathi, PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer of AKASA. “Remote deployments are often more efficient and less disruptive with the right partners. At AKASA, we intentionally designed Unified Automation for remote deployments from inception to provide the most immediate value possible to our customers.”

Survey respondents were asked, “Have social distancing or quarantine requirements related to COVID-19 caused a delay or postponement of the deployment of any technology solutions or other projects in your revenue cycle operations?”

Organizations that experienced delays were then asked, “For how long have projects been delayed?”

About AKASA

At AKASA, we believe every dollar spent on healthcare matters because healthcare matters to everyone. The only Unified Automation™ company for healthcare, AKASA uses the same machine learning approaches that made driverless cars possible to provide health systems with a single solution for automating revenue cycle operations. AKASA’s unique expert-in-the-loop approach, Unified Automation, combines modern machine-learning with human judgment and subject matter expertise to provide robust and resilient automation. Unified Automation™ adapts to the highly dynamic nature of revenue cycle operations and has been purpose-built for healthcare. AKASA enables health systems to decrease their cost to collect so they can invest more in patient care and be better stewards of the healthcare dollar. AKASA is based in the heart of Silicon Valley. Learn more at www.AKASA.com.