Still, again, meaningful use and its attendant concerns means that won't be happening quite yet.

"We're going to run through 2016, for sure, on this clinical bubble, maybe 2017," says Hoyt. Especially for hospitals "in a market that has a lot of competitive contracting, I think you're going to see a revenue cycle uptick beginning in the mid- to late-teens of this new decade. 

HIMSS Analytics data shows where the market is moving. Functionalities such as analytics, claims attachment tools, billers and dashboards are on the rise.

"It's the analytics," says Hoyt. "Or replacing with a revenue cycle that delivers analytics –  or has better analytics – for managing the old revenue cycle.

"Look at the vendors who have created new revenue cycle systems in the past four or five years," he adds. "Siemens did a rewrite. McKesson Paragon is relatively new. Cerner did a rewrite. Allscripts – a rewrite of the revenue cycle. They were getting into position because they knew they had old products that didn't pass muster."

Then there are vendors like athenahealth, whose offering is very different.

For small practices, "athena says I'll do your revenue cycle and I'll collect your bills for you," says Hoyt. "I think there's a great market for that. Because the physicians who go into practice do not want to be entrepreneurs as much as they used to. When 52 or 53 percent of residents today become employees of integrated delivery systems, it tells you that the whole market has changed."

For most healthcare organizations, though, business intelligence, working in service of the revenue cycle, will be key in the coming years, says James Gaston, senior director of clinical and business intelligence at HIMSS Analytics.

"Analytics maturity enables the healthcare organizations to transition from fee-for-service to these new reimbursement models in an effective way," says Gaston. "As we see a shift from fee-for-service, there are revenue gains because you're not chasing every little claim for every reimbursement."

That means that the "revenue cycle for new types of reimbursement is very different than the traditional revenue cycle which is set in stone and, as you noted, convoluted," he says.