Providing Best-in-Industry Expertise: 

Wage Index Wage Index Improvement Program (WIIP)

Program Description

We designed WIIP to achieve a single objective — to increase the hospital's reported average hourly wage and, in turn, its area wage index.  We accomplish this through a systematic process which begins with making providers aware of the importance of their reported data and ends with following through with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) when necessary. 

Medicare developed the Area Wage Index (AWI) to measure the relative wage level differences among geographic areas.  The indexes were used to adjust the Medicare standard payment rate (up or down) to calculate payments for a particular area.  Because 69.7% or 62%  (in year?) of the standard payment rate is adjusted by the AWI, the underlying data used to calculate the AWI is critical.  Hospitals with significant levels of Medicare discharges should view the Medicare AWI as a very high priority because it drives their Medicare payment.  Additionally, the AWI is a factor in capital, outpatient, skilled nursing facility, hospice and other Medicare payments.

Every October, Medicare is required to update the Area Wage Index.  Medicare uses Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) and rural areas when developing the AWI.  Therefore, all hospitals in such groups have a vested interest in maximizing the group's average hourly wage.

The WIIP Components and Process

The WIIP process creates a disciplined structure to assure providers properly submit quantified and accurate data.   Click here to view the details of our WIIP process.

Why Use the WIIP Program?

R-C Healthcare Management’s Wage Index Improvement Program offers many benefits:

• Comprehensiveness

Unlike RC-Healthcare Management's WIIP, most lecture-based programs focus only on providing awareness and ideas to improve data.  In fact, we're unaware of any other program that provides the assistance and follow-through that WIIP does.  We also include site visits to larger providers, when needed.  Ironically, hospital's achieve program success through these important parts of the process. 

• Results

Our firm has worked with a wide variety of geographic areas including entire states. WIIP has been effective in increasing reported wage data for CBSAs and areas with preliminary indications of increasing wage indexes as well as for areas with decreasing wage indexes. Accordingly, the program can be of benefit to all hospitals.  In addition, we've saved our clients more than $2 billion since our inception. We have a proven track record with thousands of individual hospitals and 30 hospital associations in 34 states. To learn about some specific success stories, click here.

• Experience

R-C Healthcare Management originated the wage index consulting industry in 1990 and has been optimizing hospital AHWs and AWIs far longer than any other firm. We have worked with more than half of the total salary volume of hospitals in the U.S. 

Please e-mail or call us at 800-862-5368  (in Arizona 602-995-9420) for more information.