Defense Health Agency (DHA) Uniform Business Office (UBO) Program Management Support
Altarum’s UBO Program Office Support Team assists the DHA by improving revenue cycle operations throughout the Military Health System, implementing shared services operations and best practices, and contributing to the DHA mission.
Overview
Altarum’s DHA UBO Program Office Support Team assists the DHA, the Military Departments (Army, Navy, and Air Force), and the National Capital Region Medical Directorate with improving revenue cycle operations throughout the Military Health System (MHS), implementing shared services operations and best practices, and generally contributing to the DHA mission.
We do this by providing comprehensive program management support, including program planning; change management and implementation; policy and procedure analysis and development; program compliance and audit support; core governance document development; medical billing rate development; data extraction and analysis; business process redesign; functional system requirements analysis; standardization, collection, and evaluation of performance metrics; stakeholder coordination and meeting support including subject matter expert (SME) recommendations and briefs; curriculum planning and development, including webinars, newsletter, symposia; and website content development and maintenance. As a result, Altarum DHA UBO Support Team members are recognized SMEs and routine points of contact for billing and collection operation, compliance, and policy questions from military training facility (MTF) staff and DHA stakeholders.
Key Successes
Altarum has collaborated with all functional proponents and stakeholders of the MHS revenue cycle (e.g., the Defense Manpower Data Center, Health Information Technology Directorate, Healthcare Operations Directorate, TRICARE) to migrate the MHS Standard Insurance Table and Other Health Insurance (OHI) data to the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System central repository, implement the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) national provider identifier standards and convert legacy systems to utilize required professional and institutional claim formats, receive and format clinical data to meet HIPAA 5010 electronic transaction standards, develop a central OHI discovery capability, update U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) publications (e.g., drafted the first DHA Procedure Manual and the chartering DoD Instruction for DHA’s Medical Coding Program Office), and provide comprehensive revenue cycle training and education, including ICD-10 implementation and migration of an annual conference that was cancelled due to DoD budget constraints to a less costly and more widely distributed Web-based training program.
Most recently, Altarum supported DoD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) workgroups to inform and guide their leaderships’ commitment for the USCG to use an auditable prospective payment approach (PPA) and for the VA to develop a simplified national billing rate structure to eliminate interdepartmental arrearages, reduce administrative costs, and maximize recovery of allowable charges. Altarum’s DoD-USCG PPA increased DoD revenue by more completely identifying $9 million in billable care, the recovery of which allows the MTFs to apply more funds to the treatment of DoD beneficiaries. The PPA also relieves both agencies of approximately $3 million to $5 million in administrative costs annually.