Hospitals, Health IT

Intermountain Healthcare opens new innovation center with partner

The 30,000-square-foot facility in Salt Lake City will be used for evaluating, testing and designing new revenue cycle management technologies for hospitals, health systems and physician groups and will also serve as a client experience center.

Intermountain Healthcare and revenue cycle management company R1 RCM have collaborated to create the Salt Lake City Technology and Innovation Center.

The grand opening of the center took place on June 11.

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“Partnering with R1 aligns with our philosophy of letting those who are superbly skilled in key operational areas, such as revenue cycle management, do what they do best so we can do what we do best — which is provide excellent patient care,” said Intermountain CEO Marc Harrison in a statement.

A 30,000-square-foot facility, the Salt Lake City center will be used for evaluating, testing and designing new rev cycle management technologies for hospitals, health systems and physician groups.

It will also be a client experience center where R1 will work with customers like Intermountain, AMITA Health, Quorum Health Corporation and Ascension. They will work together to develop ways that artificial intelligence and robotic process automation can help with RCM challenges such as denials management and improving the patient financial experience.

“Technology is the cornerstone of our long-term strategy to deliver improved revenue cycle results for our clients,” said R1 RCM president and CEO Joe Flanagan in a statement. “This center is another example of the strategic investments we have put in place to continue driving innovation and the development of technology to transform the patient experience and comprehensively automate transactional processes.”

R1, which is based in Chicago, provides revenue cycle services and physician advisory services to healthcare providers. Since 2011, the company has partnered with Intermountain through a co-managed service model where R1 worked in combination with Intermountain’s rev cycle operations team.

In January 2018, Intermountain revealed that 2,300 of its non-clinical employees would switch to having R1 as their employer later that year.

Earlier in 2019, the Utah-based health system joined forces with Israeli startup MDClone to rethink how to turn data into actionable insights. The key part of the collaboration involves loading Intermountain’s data into MDClone’s Sandbox within the walls of Intermountain.

In March, the system launched a new program called Intermountain at Home. It includes services like home check-ups with a PCP or advanced practice clinician; remote monitoring; virtual urgent care visits through Intermountain Connect Care; appointment video visits; dialysis and intravenous medication; and physical therapy. The program also includes support through Homespire, an Intermountain company that helps seniors live independently.

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