Overview: About Centra Medical Group’s Anesthesia Service Line
Centra Health System serves a large area of South-central Virginia with five hospitals and more than 700 providers. With 91% market share, they treat patients across a broad spectrum of both urban and rural communities. Lynchburg General Hospital, their largest facility, is also the busiest Emergency Department in the state of Virginia. During a restructuring effort, Centra Health System brought many of its RCM functions in house. Not Anesthesia. Centra finance leaders quickly determined that the code-driven complexity of Anesthesia RCM was best left to the expertise of Ventra Health. Through ongoing partnership with Ventra Health, the Anesthesia service line continues to exceed reimbursement expectations and serve as a model for the rest of the organization.
Ongoing Optimization Improves Reimbursement
Centra’s 120+ anesthesiologists serve more than 28,000 patients annually. Despite the high volume, the Anesthesia service line performs at or better than Centra Health System’s overall benchmarks.
Performance Highlights
- Average Days in AR: 35
- Average Denial Rate: less than 5%
- Average AR over 90 days (not including self-pay): 20%
Continuous improvement is always the goal. The Ventra Health team meets bi-weekly internally and monthly Centra, looking for opportunities to increase revenue and pivoting when industry changes affect reimbursement. When Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announced a change to CRNA billing, for example, they worked together to assess and mitigate the impact—including bringing in Ventra’s Provider Education team to help ensure both the CRNAs and physicians were correctly documenting their procedures.
“We have a strong partnership, keeping each other in the loop on both sides, not just with Centra accounts but also within the industry,” says Kim White, Director of Client Success for Ventra Health.
Close collaboration also keeps the Ventra team updated on physician credential status, so claims can be held as needed and released promptly when cleared for payment.
“Having a trusted partner like Ventra doing excellent work in the Anesthesia area has allowed us to focus on the hospitals and on some of our less complicated service lines,” says Robert Boos, Vice President of Revenue Cycle for Centra Health.
Custom Analytics Drive Performance
A critical finance need for Centra’s highly engaged team is future planning, including the ability to establish budgets and set expectations for the coming year. Ventra’s core service metrics are built into the reporting structure for every client, providing accurate, real-time visibility into the health and performance of a practice. In addition, a series of custom reports, fine-tuned over the years in collaboration with Ventra’s data & analytics team, deliver specific metrics that are meaningful to Centra.
Granular reporting last year on outstanding claims, expected reimbursement, and cases by surgical specialty allowed Centra to increase the budget for the Anesthesia service line. Further, a new report developed in 2024 shows year-to-date comparisons to the prior year, versus monthly averages, prior month comparisons, or prior year in full. This unique view helps remove monthly variances and reveal more accurately how the service line is performing to date compared to the previous year. If the numbers are off track, analysts can dig deeper to uncover the causes.
“The year-to-date report, in particular, has really helped us with tracking,” White says. “It is now something I have implemented with other clients, as well.”
The breadth of data requested reflects Centra’s multifunctional team, which includes representatives from the accounts receivable, revenue, and clinical sides of the organization.
“We have unique perspectives and unique questions,” Boos says. “What Ventra does really well is take a task list on all these individual requests from different angles and get us the answers that we need.”
Partnership Ensures Resilience
While strong metrics and steady performance are certainly the goals, Boos notes that the true measure of a partner is how they handle a crisis. The Ventra team got an unfortunate opportunity to shine during the Change Healthcare cyberattack in February 2024, which impacted claim processing across the industry and brought collections to a halt.
“We saw a lot of people trip over this,” Boos says, “and then we saw Ventra really rise above it.”
In what Boos describes as “a land of chaos,” Ventra quickly emerged with a solid plan, communicating clearly what Centra could expect to see in terms of revenue recovery at 30-day intervals across the next several months. Ventra’s deep bench of experts in Global Service Delivery, Client Success, Data & Analytics, and IT worked together across departments to develop new claim processes and mitigate the impact to client revenue.
For Centra, the curve started to flatten 60 days after the attack and was back up within four months. Despite the interruption, Centra closed the year out strong compared to the previous year. Their Net Collections Rate improved 4.3%, Average Monthly Collections increased $46,000, and Collections Per Visit increased $18.
Download Success Story as PDF“Anyone can hold a ship steady when the seas are calm. It’s when a hurricane blows across that you see if they keep their hands on the wheel and have a plan. Ventra really showed what they are made of in that situation.”
Robert Boos, Vice President of Revenue Cycle for Centra Health
