Service Lines
What are service lines?
A service line involves coordinating multidisciplinary services across the care continuum to provide services for a specific patient cohort. They typically focus on a specific type of patient or disease group and consider the location of service, ICD-10 procedure codes, diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), and other terminology related to financial coding.
Other variables used to define a service line are centered on population health, including demographics, social determinants of health, and other lifestyle factors. In this way, service lines can be defined both internally and externally based on operational and clinical factors.
Service lines also exist in specialty areas, including orthopedics, geriatrics, oncology, cardiology, chronic care management, and neurosciences.
How can service lines improve healthcare?
Service lines allow physicians to collaborate and develop clinical protocols while also using evidence-based medicine to inform purchasing decisions. This helps organizations deliver consistent and patient-centric care by reducing clinical variation.
Hospitals can also use service lines to evaluate the business and see the effect of a specific service line, looking at data such as revenue and expenses from each department, patient accounting and demographic data, and cost accounting data.
Additionally, by targeting population health, service lines can provide better health outcomes for a specific group of people in a company’s service area.