As I began in the medical billing field, some of the highest “business intelligence” needed was simply convincing healthcare providers they should change from their antiquated internal system of pegboard accounting and ledger cards to using a billing company that could computerize and organize all their accounts. A no-brainer!

Now, a Google search of “business intelligence for medical billing” brings up pages of listings of articles, information, and vendors. That is a bit of brain overload.

So, how do we as medical business professionals navigate such a hot, intense, evolving topic such as this? You look to your partners at HBMA for support. One of the greatest benefits of being a member of HBMA are the resources provided through our vendor community. Our association offers a central point for members to seek out established, qualified vendors to enhance our own service offerings, improve our operations, and even deliver education to help us gain better understanding of what we need to know to make sound business decision. The use of business intelligence (BI) in our industry was completely new just a few years ago, and now many companies have integrated BI into their daily operations to improve efficiencies, enhance reporting, and learn from real-time data analytics.

In this edition of RCM Advisor, you will find a host of articles contributed to help us better understand what business intelligence is and how we can use it in our businesses today. You will also find many of the authors of these articles will be presenting at our HBMA 2019: The Healthcare Revenue Cycle Conference, Sept. 12-14, 2019, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Please take time now to explore these articles and sign up for our fall conference to learn more about business intelligence, along with a host of other subjects of interest and impact in our industry.

The expert authors that contribute to these articles explain the growing need for information in our business, not just data, but information organized in a meaningful way for your company and your clients. That is BI, getting information and analysis that you can use to make critical decisions. You will find great details on what BI can do and how it does it in the articles “Creating Healthcare Innovation With Data” on page 19 and “Beating Competitors With Analytics” on page 24, along with a variety of other exciting topics in the rest of our quarterly publication.

– Mick Polo, CHBME, HBMA President