Hospitals and physician practices have more visibility into their revenue cycle than ever. What they often lack is the capacity to act on it. A denied claim creates two jobs: figuring out what went wrong, and doing the work to fix it. When the second job stalls, the dashboard stays accurate and the revenue stays uncollected.

Gayatri Garg, Chief Revenue Officer at Anka, addressed that gap in a recent interview on the Open Forum Business Hour on Hum FM. She discussed where AI in healthcare adds real value, where human expertise is still essential, and what leaders should ask before they invest in revenue cycle technology.

You provide the service and wait to get paid, if you get paid. That’s the reality too many providers are dealing with. We’re here to help hospitals and doctors get paid for what they’re owed.

Gayatri Garg, Chief Revenue Officer of Anka

The stakes are highest for community and rural providers. According to the Chartis Center for Rural Health, 41% of rural hospitals operate with a negative margin. For these organizations, revenue that has been earned but never collected limits their ability to keep serving patients.

Key Points From the Conversation

• AI should finish the work, not just flag it. Analytics can show where problems recur, but a flagged account still needs someone, or something, to take the next step. That means pulling records, answering documentation requests, checking claim status and following up until the claim is resolved.
• AI needs a driver who knows the road. Garg compared AI to driver assistance. It keeps getting better, but it depends on accurate data, well-configured processes and specialists who know when a case needs judgment. She cautioned against expecting AI to fix a broken workflow, or paying for automation an EHR already provides.
• Denials deserve a hard look. “If your denial rate is more than five percent, you should question why that is,” Garg said. “Some of them you cannot prevent, but some of them you can prevent. So what are you doing to prevent it?”
• Automation should benefit the provider. The efficiency AI creates should show up in the provider’s collections, denial performance, days in AR and cost-to-collect, not just in the vendor’s economics. It should also free experienced staff for complex cases and patient conversations.

Anka connects to a provider’s existing EHR, identifies where revenue is leaking, and works the claims, denials and underpayments needed to recover it. Experienced RCM specialists step in where judgment matters, and the Anka team stays close from onboarding onward.

“We’re here to help hospitals and doctors get paid for what they’re owed,” said Garg.

The full interview is available at AI in Healthcare: The Future of Medical Billing & Patient Care.