HFMA forums: real-world connections, ideas, and solutions: HFMA has established four members—only Forums, networking groups that focus on unique interests and issues facing senior finance executives and managed care, healthcare compliance, and patient financial services professionals

Healthcare Financial Management, Annual, 2004

Each HFMA Forum is designed to expand the resources available to healthcare finance professionals, offering tools and practical knowledge that easily translate into real-world solutions for the healthcare finance industry.

CFO Forum: Networking On-Line to Share Expertise and Support

Creating professional connections with other senior finance executives can be a particularly challenging aspect of the CFO's job. Competitive concerns about networking too close to ho me, for example, often keep some CFOs away from local education programs. Trying to find other CFOs in facilities of a similar size or with similar levels of revenue can also be difficult on a local level.

Members of the CFO Forum, however, have access to hundreds of other CFOs around the country via the Forum's e-mail discussion list (also known as a list serve). Recent topics that have been discussed among the members of the CFO Forum include incentives to collection agencies for a short-term increase in cash collections, research protocols, centralized scheduling, and hospital capital expenditures, to name only a few.

The CFO Forum includes top financial executives from all aspects of healthcare delivery. Issues covered by the CFO Forum include accounting standards, financial reporting, taxation issues, and legislative and regulatory developments.

Healthcare Compliance Forum: Providing Access to Compliance Resources

The mission of the Healthcare Compliance Forum is to provide compliance education and foster an environment for the exchange of ideas among its members and within HFMA. This Forum helps compliance professionals by addressing new investigative and legislative developments, developing and maintaining effective compliance programs, and educating and training staff.

The Healthcare Compliance Forum also continues its tradition of releasing compliance checklists based on guidance promulgated by the OIC. To date, the Forum has completed checklists for DME suppliers, hospitals, clinical laboratories, home health agencies, Medicare+Choice organizations, nursing facilities, small group physician practices, and third-party medical billing companies. All are available at www.hfma.org/resource/compcheck.htm.

Managed Care Forum: Improving Payer-Provider Relationships

Getting a healthcare claim paid can be a perplexing process. Providers understand that managing denials is paramount in addressing issues related to cash flow, compliance, and other regulatory requirements. With increasing financial constraints affecting both providers and payers, all parties must ensure that claims processing is handled accurately and consistently.

The Managed Care Forum is for professionals from both payer and provider organizations who are engaged in aligning the financing and delivery of health care to improve quality and control costs. The mission of the Managed Care Forum is to offer information, education, and professional networking opportunities designed to improve understanding and build better relationships between payers and providers.

PFS Forum: Supporting Cash-Flow Managers in Health Care

The role of the PFS professional has grown significantly in importance and recognition in recent years. Opportunities and challenges have emerged for PFS leaders as they have assumed greater responsibility for making policy decisions; creating systems and procedures for collection, billing, accounting, and cash flow management; and interacting with various clinical and other nonfinance hospital staff. The PFS Forum supports PFS professionals in maintaining the financial viability of their organizations.

The PFS Forum's mission is to provide services to meet the specialized education, technical, leadership, and networking needs of traditional and emerging revenue cycle management professionals. Topics addressed by the Forum include revenue-cycle process improvement, billing and coding compliance, claims preparation and submission, data standardization and privacy, and patient access.

All HFMA Forum memberships include monthly newsletters, access to the forums' members-only web sites containing exclusive tools and information, subscription to members-only e-mail discussion lists, networking opportunities, a forum membership directory, and free HFMA audio teleconferences. For more information about HFMA Forums, go to www.hfma.org/forum.