Lynn Ansley, vice president of revenue cycle management at Moffitt Cancer Center, is helping oversee one of the most significant operational transformations in the Tampa-based cancer center’s history: a transition to Epic.
The transition kicked off implementation Jan. 1 and is expected to be completed by late July 2027, a spokesperson for Moffitt confirmed with Becker’s.
Becker’s connected with Ms. Ansley, who has been with Moffitt for 13 years and leads a team of nearly 640 employees, on a Becker’s “CFO + Revenue Cycle Podcast” episode to discuss how the Epic implementation is reshaping workflows, the role automation plays in freeing staff for higher-level work, and how revenue cycle leaders can cultivate the talent needed to thrive in an increasingly technology-driven environment.
Editor’s note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are the biggest shifts you’re seeing in the revenue cycle right now, and how is your team adapting?
Lynn Ansley: We’re transitioning to Epic. With that foundational shift comes the way that we work. One of the biggest shifts, in all revenue cycles, is how we’re using our talent and how we’re cultivating our talent. We are a tech-enabled revenue cycle, versus technology being an afterthought. When I think about the journey here at Moffitt, we have been in the process efficiency game for over a decade now. In our current state, our revenue cycle is actually augmented by about 500 FTE equivalent of your traditional robotic process automation.
That has led us to our team members doing the more critical thinking work versus the more mundane, repetitive tasks. As I think about the shift of technology and the revenue cycle and all of the solutions that are enabling our team to work smarter, I think the skill set of the revenue cycle talent starts to change in a much faster way than it has. It’s thinking about things like, how do you get the right talent? How do you upskill your team members? How do you get them access to the tools that can make their jobs easier? We’re doing all of this while focusing on the engagement of our top talent so we can retain them longer, even as our expectations of them increase. That’s really important because here at Moffitt, our purpose in revenue cycle is to optimize reimbursement to find a cure faster. We’re always looking for ways to reduce our costs, to collect [and] work smarter. That way we can reinvest more into finding a cure.
Q: Where are you finding the most meaningful wins, whether through technology, workflow changes or team structure?
LA: One of the things I love about our revenue cycle is my whole leadership team will tell you what’s good enough today is not good enough tomorrow. We are just constantly reevaluating the process. It’s a really great time for us right now, because we are in our build wave one for Epic implementation, which is giving us the ability to kind of step back and rethink processes that we historically thought was pretty great. What’s happening is, it’s opening our eyes to opportunities that have always been there. We just needed to see it through a different lens.
One of the ways we’ve done this historically is to bring some of our top performers from our front lines into development meetings and just pick their brains and say, “What is it about your workflow that you wish you had a magic wand and could change?” That really starts this conversation around, OK, we have automation that we could, we could deploy some RPA around that workflow and give you some quick wins in your process. Those sorts of brainstorming sessions are things that just come natural to us. We do have a business automation and optimization team that reports into revenue cycle right now that helps enable the technology experts, with the operational leaders, [and] with the front-line staff, to really make change in a very rapid pace.
At the Becker's Perioperative Summit, taking place September 14–15 in Chicago, perioperative leaders and healthcare executives will focus on improving operating room efficiency, enhancing patient safety, optimizing staffing and driving innovation across surgical services. Apply for complimentary registration now.
