Custom forecast amounts allow you to model growth and pinpoint sources of revenue leakage. By adjusting key inputs like gross charges and claim volume, users can significantly enhance forecast accuracy, helping to pinpoint potential revenue losses more effectively. This capability also helps take into account past or model future real-world events, such as seasonal variations or growth trends. This article navigates how to best utilize custom forecast amounts, how to improve forecasts, and modeling for real-world events.
1. Improving Forecast Accuracy
Rivet's forecasting algorithms are designed to deliver precise financial projections. However, inaccuracies can arise, typically due to misestimated gross charges or claim volumes. These inaccuracies can significantly distort downstream forecasts, affecting the overall financial outlook. Custom adjustments to these primary inputs allow forecasts to start from a more accurate baseline, making subsequent projections like net revenue or unrecovered denials better indicators of areas prone to revenue leakage.
Most of these cases are due to “real world changes” such as adding/reducing provider count, or due to seasonality that has not yet been captured by our algorithms. In these cases, modifying the gross charges or claim volume used by the forecasting algorithm yields tremendous benefits.
Here is an example of Rivet underestimating the gross charges for this period, leading to a 3.4% variance between forecasted and actual net revenue.
To correct this follow these steps:
Navigate to the “Custom forecast amounts” button on the top right.
This will open the custom forecast amounts modal. From here, click on “Use actuals” next to gross charges to override the forecasted gross charges with the actual gross charges.
Next, click submit and the forecast will update using this new “input”. This new forecast will retain the same granular characteristics Rivet excels at — using your payer mix, procedure mix, and all the other relevant pieces of information to make an informed forecast based on your data.
You will also have the option to reset this custom forecast with the reset to default button above the date selection.
2. Modeling Real-World Events like Seasonality or Growth
We are constantly working on enhancing our forecasting algorithms, but sometimes real-world factors like seasonality or recent changes in practice operations might not be fully captured. Additionally, this feature allows you to model events that have not happened yet, such as understanding the impact of increasing your volume in the future. To manually adjust forecasts for such events:
Select the applicable date range.
Click on “Custom forecast amounts” in the top right.
Choose what info you are modifying.
Enter the custom forecast amount.
Click submit to use the custom forecast amount.
You will also have the option to reset this custom forecast with the reset to default button above the date selection.
It's important to note that while custom forecast amounts offer valuable flexibility, they do not save permanently, and forecast dates remain unalterable after adjustments. Users can still modify other filters as needed.
For further assistance or inquiries about custom forecast amounts, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team via chat or email at support@rivethealth.com.
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