Celebrating Our Two-Year Anniversary with Optum

Two years ago, on September 27, 2020, Boulder Community Health’s and Optum launched our strategic partnership. From the start, our work together has been focused on driving growth, innovation, and financial sustainability for health care in our community. Highlights from our 2nd year include the following:

Driving financial sustainability through revenue cycle improvements

Despite the significant financial headwinds we have faced, Optum’s support in modernizing our revenue cycle function – through people, process and technology – has been critical to ensuring we are appropriately paid for the great care we provide.

• We have made significant improvements in the accuracy of clinical documentation, reduced controllable write-offs and decreased eligibility and authorization denials. These efforts resulted in an additional $6M in appropriate reimbursement for BCH across 2021, and we are seeing continued improvements across 2022.

• We have also launched efforts to improve the patient financial experience, by expanding patient financial counseling and providing more robust training and support to our staff, improving call abandonment rates by 8%.

Enabling the delivery of value-based care

Optum’s care management and analytics teams are supporting us in our ongoing commitment to delivering high-value care.

• We successfully participated in Primary Care First (PCF), a government program that rewards clinics for providing Medicare patients with high-quality care at a lower cost; across PCF and other value-based care programs, we increased the percentage of patients who receive preventive Annual Wellness Visits by 40%.

• Through Optum’s clinical triage line, patients received needed education and support after-hours that resulted in redirection from the ER to the right level of care in over 45% of eligible interactions.

Developing and implementing a robust strategic plan

Optum has been a critical partner in the development and implementation of our strategic plan. We have several initiatives underway:

• Service Line Transformation: sponsored by Jackie Attlesey-Pries, VP & Chief Operating Officer, our Optum cardiology project is focused on improving clinical operations, ensuring timely access for patients, and driving growth to extend the reach of our cardiology services.

• Extraordinary Workforce: sponsored by Sarah Meshak, VP & General Counsel, our Optum workforce transformation project is focused on creating a more stable, engaged and sustainable team through process improvement and workflow redesign.

• Consumer Choice & Loyalty: sponsored by Mike Jefferies, VP & Chief Information Officer, our Optum analytics and project teams are supporting efforts to attract and retain consumers by identifying patients and helping them access services at the time they are shopping for care.

• Integrated Network: sponsored by Dr. Ben Keidan, VP & Chief Medical Officer, our Optum analytics, actuarial, and research teams are supporting the Boulder Valley Care Network by identifying opportunities to grow our network and improve financial and clinical performance.

As Boulder Community Health celebrates its own historic 100-year anniversary, we are proud to have Optum as a partner, helping us to thrive today and into the future. Our deepest thanks to our 250+ shared team members who celebrated our collective impact with community service events.

Please join us in celebrating our collective impact and service these past two years!

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