Blessing Hospital, a not-for-profit hospital in Quincy, Ill., is using information technology to improve its revenue cycle management.

The hospital is implementing Sunrise Enterprise, a revenue cycle solution from Atlanta-based Eclipsys.

Hospital officials say the deployment will improve workflow efficiency, reduce claim denials, accelerate cash collections and improve the bottom line.

"Sunrise Patient Financials is recognized as one of the top-tier solutions in the industry," said Pat Gerveler, Blessing Hospital's chief financial officer. "We chose to partner with a trusted, total-enterprise vendor offering a single set of proven solutions on the same platform to realize synergies between revenue cycle and clinical operations. We expect this initiative to help us achieve a seamless flow of information throughout the entire patient process to enhance the accuracy of our revenue cycle data and to reduce inefficiencies, denials and IT maintenance costs."

The technology is designed to enable updated patient information in the hospital's back-office financial system to seamlessly flow into front-end access solutions to help prevent reoccurring billing issues upon subsequent patient visits.

Blessing also expects to enhance staff effectiveness at registration desks – in particular the verification process for insurance eligibility - to reduce errors and omissions that lead to denials.

"Blessing recognizes the importance of a total solution that includes superior clinical systems, as well as integrated access management and revenue cycle solutions to simplify and reduce IT costs, optimize workflows and enhance the efficiency and accuracy of its data running through its technology," said Jay Deady, Eclipsys' executive vice president of client solutions.

Hospital officials say they hope to see significant cost savings by replacing an existing third-party service for denials management.