In this episode, Christina Brown, BESLER’s VP of Reimbursement Services, provides us with a glimpse into BESLER’s upcoming The Hospital Finance Academy Webinar, Cost Report Essentials: A Comprehensive Deep Dive Into The Basics – Part 1, hosted live on Wednesday, July 23, at 1 PM ET.
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Learn how to listen to The Hospital Finance Podcast® on your mobile device.Highlights of this episode include:
- What will be discussed during webinar and how it is different
- Ideal audience for this webinar
- Key takeaways
- Impactful areas such as interns and residents, uncompensated care, and wage index
Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast. We’re pleased to welcome back Christina Brown, BESLER’s Vice President of Reimbursement Services. In this episode, Christina will provide us with a glimpse into BESLER’s upcoming the Hospital Finance Academy webinar, Cost Report Essentials: A Comprehensive Deep Dive Into The Basics-Part One, that we’re hosting live on Wednesday, July 23, at 1 PM Eastern Time. Welcome back and thank you for joining us, Christina.
Christina Brown: Thanks so much, Kelly. It’s always a pleasure to be here.
Kelly: It’s always a pleasure to have you. So, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, can you tell us what kinds of things you’re going to be discussing in this webinar? And how is this webinar different from the ones you’ve done previously on this topic?
Christina: Kelly, that’s a great question, and I’m glad you asked. So, this webinar actually differentiates quite a bit from the others that I’ve done in our free offerings that we have. Since this is an Academy webinar, we’re hoping to add a little bit more value. So, the ones that you’ve probably seen previously in the past…they assume just some basic reimbursement knowledge, and they will dive right into the how-tos and the mechanics. Usually, what we cover is the 2552-10 Hospital Cost Report. Sometimes we cover other cost reports. But typically, when we’re looking at those other webinars, we just dive right into the cost report. But in this webinar, I’m actually going to take a step back from all those assumptions that you have all this prerequisite reimbursement knowledge, and it’s really going to focus quite a bit more on the things that I haven’t covered in previous webinar offerings.
Kelly: Awesome. Sounds like it’s going to be a great webinar. So, speaking of prerequisites, do you need any basic prerequisite knowledge to be able to understand the talking points you’re going to talk about in the webinar? And who do you think the ideal audience for this webinar is?
Christina: Okay. So, I’m glad you asked that. So, as I mentioned, this webinar will be less about jumping right into all the how-tos of various reimbursement functions and best practices, or even educating on any of the more granular-level reimbursement items. But rather, what we’re going to be doing is, like I said, take a step back and just really start from the beginning. What is the cost report and why is it important? I believe this webinar would really be well suited for someone that is brand new to reimbursement, or maybe someone that really has no foundational knowledge of reimbursement and cost reporting. Sometimes when you’re a cost reporting expert, you kind of just get thrown into the deep end. Here’s all the how-tos. You just need to mimic what you did prior year. But really, like I said, we’re going to be focusing on what’s important with the cost report and just how it kind of all began and all those kinds of items. So it really could be for anyone that wants to gain a better understanding of what the cost report is all about, like someone in a position that’s maybe adjacent to the cost report, or maybe someone that is just in finance or general accounting or even patient accounting, revenue integrity, or just anyone who really just needs a basic understanding of what the cost report is.
Kelly: Sounds like this is going to be a really useful webinar for a lot of people. So looking forward to that. And so can you elaborate a little bit more on the types of things you’re going to be covering?
Christina: Sure. Yeah. So really, and on the agenda, what we’re going to be starting with is I’ll be taking a look at the Medicare program and just giving a basic overview of what that is. And then we’re going to be talking about what is a cost report, just some of the key takeaways, and what’s it mean for an accounting person. Just putting in plain simple English, those basic terms, what is it? And then again, we’ll be talking about why it is important for hospitals and for other facilities. And then we’ll probably step into some of the key concepts and a few of the components and just some basic areas to know. We’ll be talking about things like the timing and the filing of the cost report, rules and manuals and transmittals, all that are involved with the cost report. We’ll also briefly touch on some of the MAC jurisdictions. And then I’ll be delving into some of the cost report types. I know we focus a lot on the 2552-10, which is the Hospital Cost Report, but there are other cost report types. So, I’ll give you basic definitions of what those are. And then finally, I’m just going to end off with just some key takeaways.
Kelly: Yeah. I love the key takeaways that y’all do. Those are always great things to take with you into your actual position. So would you share a sneak peek as to what makes the cost report so important and why providers need to take extra care and having a deep understanding of what’s on it and its impact?
Christina: Sure. Yeah, so really, it’s for a few simple reasons, and mainly it’s government reimbursement. And if you’re looking at a reimbursement professional and that they do the cost report, a lot of times you’ll see that that person is in government reimbursement. And really, what does that mean? Well, it means that they do the cost report. And the cost report, it impacts things like rate setting, which is important for the patient accounting folks. It also has a settlement, and that’s important because, basically, it’s like a tax return. What do you owe or what does the government owe you? So, it gives that settlement at the end of the fiscal year. It also impacts large payments. And that’s really where a lot of time is focused when you’re looking at the cost report, and that’s really where a lot of the strategies come into play with the cost report. And that’s for things like interns and residents, disproportionate share, or you may know it as uncompensated care, also wage index, organ programs, reimbursement, as well as all the other items that are not reimbursed directly through claims. So, there are a lot of big, impactful areas when it comes to the cost report. So, it is very important for those many reasons.
Kelly: Yeah. It does seem like it’s quite important. So, it seems like there’s a lot to consider here. So will you be covering any of those big reimbursement items, like you mentioned interns and residents, uncompensated care, wage index, other impactful areas that we all hear so much about?
Christina: So unfortunately, those are, like I said, a lot– there’s a lot to uncover with those, a lot to unpack, and a lot to comprehend within those topics. So not really in this webinar. We’re not really going to dive too much into those. I may briefly mention them, but I’m not really going to go too far into them because those topics really require a significant amount of prerequisite knowledge of reimbursement. And we already actually have content already on these topics. However, we do plan to cover those topics in depth in the Academy sessions in the future on really anything reimbursement. So, like I said, those topics, we already do have content for, but as you’ll get with this Academy session, you’ll get a lot more in-depth knowledge on those topics as we go further along.
Kelly: Yeah, we do have some great content on our website already on these topics. And I know you all do plan on covering them. And I know there’s so much to know here. So, I mean, you could be on this webinar for hours if you delved into all of that. So, I know you kind of mentioned this already, but will there be any helpful takeaways that will be gained from attending this webinar?
Christina: Yeah. That’s actually a great question, Kelly. So, we always have related content with our webinars, and this one’s really going to be no different. So, I am going to be providing some resources that really any reimbursement or adjacent profession would find useful. So, a lot of the cost reporting revolves around regulatory updates, and it’s really important to know where to find what you’re looking for. So really, some of the key takeaways will be just, “Hey, what does all this mean?” But we’ll also have some resources that you can use down the road as you’re looking into research. Like if you hear something or if you’re in your profession and you hear some mention that maybe I’ve mentioned on this webinar that you can go back and reference, and you can even see anything that’s been updated since then.
Kelly: Wow. Yeah, we all love the best practices and key takeaways that y’all provide. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Christina, and for sharing this sneak peek into the upcoming Academy webinar, Cost Report Essentials: A Comprehensive Deep Dive Into The Basics – Part One, that you’re presenting live on Wednesday, July 23, at 1 PM Eastern Time. And as a bonus, you can earn CPE. Thanks again, Christina.
Christina: Thank you so much, Kelly.
Kelly: And thank you all for joining us for this episode of the Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…
[music] This concludes today’s episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. For show notes and additional resources to help you protect and enhance revenue at your hospital, visit besler.com/podcasts. The Hospital Finance Podcast is a production of BESLER | SMART ABOUT REVENUE, TENACIOUS ABOUT RESULTS.
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