Tracy Bostrom

Most hospital leaders I talk to aren't flying blind. They have dashboards. They have denial rates. They have monthly reports that land on time and look, on the surface, just fine. The problem isn't a lack of data. It's that the data is answering the wrong question. Revenue cycle dashboards are designed to tell you what happened downstream, after the claim, after the visit, after the decisions were already made. They're a rearview mirror. What they don't show is what's happening upstream. The...

You have seen it. The new patient tower. The $200 million EHR rollout. The latest imaging technology that could belong in a research hospital. Your organization just bought a Ferrari. Yet Emergency Department revenue growth feels muted. Patient throughput feels tight. Staffing feels strained. Nothing looks broken in your reports, but nothing feels like it is performing the way it should. That is because most hospitals are driving that Ferrari in second gear. In the Emergency Department, the...

For healthcare finance leaders wrestling with margin compression despite clean RCM dashboards. I spend a lot of time with hospital CFOs and health system finance leaders who are doing everything "right." Revenue cycle management dashboards look clean. Denials are under control. Days in AR are reasonable. Vendors are hitting their KPIs. And yet, hospital margin compression persists. The instinct is always the same: look harder at Revenue Cycle. Push vendors. Tighten follow-up. Add oversight....