Articles

Burnout, Bandwidth & the Bottom Line: A CFO’s Guide to Revenue Cycle Resilience

Feb 9, 2026

In today’s demanding healthcare environment, rising workforce burnout and capacity strain have measurable impacts not only on patient care but also financial stability. This is true on both the clinical and administrative sides of the business (particularly in revenue cycle management). While wellness programs play an important role in addressing healthcare workforce burnout, they’re not the only solutions. Operational design and external partnerships help revenue cycle management teams absorb volume spikes, staffing gaps, and payer or regulatory changes with greater ease. The result? Long-term resilience; a top priority for every hospital CFO nationwide, particularly as hospitals continue to face rising costs and higher rates of uninsured patients.  

Burnout is a Business Issue 

There’s no denying it: Despite some improvements, healthcare workforce burnout is pervasive and cultural, affecting nearly every aspect of the business, including patient safety, financial performance, execution speed, organizational stability, and more. Hospital financial leadership, particularly the CFO, is uniquely positioned to address healthcare workforce burnout because they are often charged with funding critical employee wellness program and designing operations to eliminate chronic, system-driven stress that wears revenue cycle management staff down over time. 

 

For example, by partnering with a revenue cycle management organization that reduces manual follow-ups and accelerates self-pay workflows, a hospital CFO minimizes constant payer firefighting. By championing standardized, automated processes for patient engagement, billing, and account resolution, a hospital CFO improves accuracy, throughput, and cash flow across the revenue cycle. In addition, by investing in flexible revenue cycle management partnerships, a hospital CFO gains scalable capacity, specialized expertise, and consistent oversight during regulatory shifts, seasonal volume spikes, or staffing shortages. With the right healthcare financial leadership in place, these measures drive more predictable operations, fewer backlogs and denials, and stronger support for internal billing and patient access teams. 

Why Burnout is No Longer Just a Clinical or HR Issue 

With ongoing margin pressures, increasing regulatory complexity, and staffing shortages, it’s not surprising that today’s healthcare organizations continue to experience widespread workforce burnout that affects executive leaders, revenue cycle teams, and back-office personnel. Unfortunately, when organizational capacity is strained, overall performance is likely to decline. This is true even for hospitals and health systems that have the best intentions.  

 

When it comes to addressing healthcare workforce burnout, intentions don’t drive sustainable change. Actions do. That’s where the right healthcare financial leadership can help. A hospital CFO who rethinks operations and embraces external revenue cycle management partnerships is one who helps improve burnout, bandwidth, and the bottom line.  

 

The Hidden Financial Cost of Workforce Instability 

With ever-present healthcare workforce burnout comes the probability of staff turnover and associated expenses that no hospital CFO wants to absorb. These expenses rarely show up on a profit-and-loss ledger but tend to compound quickly. Examples include costs related to recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity, errors, and rework. In revenue cycle operations, these hidden costs manifest as slower cashflow, increased denials, and missed follow-up opportunities.  

 

Early Warning Signs CFOs and Executives Often Miss 

Workforce burnout doesn’t appear spontaneously. It happens gradually and insidiously over time as a gradual erosion of energy, engagement, and resilience. Early warning signs that should be on the hospital CFO radar include the following: 

 

  • Decision fatigue at the leadership level 
  • Delayed strategic initiatives due to operational overload 
  • Normalization of chronic backlog 
  • Overreliance on a few key individuals 

 

In general, slow organizational momentum is the loudest signal that burnout is happening and that it deserves the attention of the hospital CFO with the right healthcare financial leadership skills.  

The CFO’s Role in Organizational Resilience  

In today’s highly competitive and regulated environment, healthcare financial leadership means protecting human capital as fiercely as financial capital. That’s why a hospital CFO is so critical. By designing and funding sustainable operations, CFOs help address the root causes of healthcare workforce burnout. This includes the designing and funding the following: 

 

  • Capacity  
  • Outsource partnerships 
  • Risk distribution across the organization 

 

Aligning Expectations With Capacity: Where Strategy Meets Reality 

 

Today’s hospitals and health systems have high expectations: Faster cash, higher accuracy, and greater compliance. And there’s no reason why they can’t achieve these goals. Yet teams are stretched thin, making it difficult to move forward. A hospital CFO can ensure strategy reflects operational reality. More specifically, they can raise these critical questions: 

 

  • How do we reduce friction without increasing headcount? 
  • What truly requires internal expertise? 
  • Where can specialized partners absorb complexity? 

 

By investing in the necessary infrastructure (staffing, automation, and revenue cycle management partnerships) a hospital CFO helps ensure that organizational strategy moves beyond aspiration to become truly attainable. 

 

 

How the Right Partner Helps Relieve Operational and Leadership Strain  

A strong revenue cycle partner aligned with an organization’s culture can: 

 

  • Absorb administrative and follow-up burden 
  • Reduce noise and rework that drains leadership attention 
  • Stabilize revenue cycle performance amid staffing fluctuations  

 

With a strategic revenue cycle management partnership, hospitals regain focus and bandwidth.  

 

From Burnout to Balance: Building Long-Term Resilience  

It’s a fact: Sustainable revenue cycle management teams drive sustainable margins. Profit without people is impossible. However, resilience doesn’t happen automatically. It requires a conscious and deliberate effort. A hospital CFO can build this resilience through: 

 

  • Clear accountability 
  • Realistic workload design 
  • Trusted revenue cycle management partnerships with shared risk and responsibility 

 

When it comes to savvy healthcare financial leadership, it’s not about asking revenue cycle management teams to do more—it’s about helping them do what matters most. 

 

Leadership Capacity is Finite: Strategy Should Respect That   

Remember: An organization experiencing healthcare workforce burnout isn’t a failed organization. It’s an organization yearning for redesign. For a hospital CFO, prioritizing employee well-being through efficient operations and strategic revenue cycle partnerships is not just ‘soft’ leadership; it’s a smart financial decision. 

Karie Bostwick

VP of People and Compliance

As VP of People and Compliance at Revenue Enterprises, Karie Bostwick oversees People functions including recruiting, training, onboarding, engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, she is responsible for compliance training, oversight and monitoring.

Karie has a long history of working in the revenue cycle support industry. Her skills span leadership, operations start up, policies and procedures development, operations workflow, budgeting and client management.

She is passionate about the experience of our people, patients and the Healthcare clients we serve and believes that a team of diverse, talented and motivated individuals working together toward a common goal can make a difference.

Robert Sterett

VP of Information Technology

As a transformational leader Robert Sterett has leveraged his 20 years of experience to build effective service lines and exceptional teams. In his role as VP of Information Technology at Revenue Enterprises, Robert excels at taking a unique, balanced, and strategic approach to technology leadership with people first for the best possible outcome. Using his experience from engineering, project management and service line management he takes a multi-faceted approach to ensure the right people are in the correct position coupled with the best technology to meet or exceed all expectations from security to compliance and business continuity.

Robert’s leadership style lends itself to building long term relationships and has consistently been a relied upon strength in many organizations. Over Robert’s time as an IT operational and project leader, he has spent significant time in both hands-on technology facing roles and client centric management roles to bring the best solutions that strive to meet the business and client needs.

Focusing heavily on his personal development skills and opportunities, Robert continues to foster coaching and mentorship relationships everywhere in his life, and the lives around him.

Douglas Dunbar

VP of Sales & Marketing

As VP of Sales and Marketing for Revenue Enterprises, Douglas Dunbar leads with a passion for building strategic partnerships, nurturing relationships, and upholding customer service excellence. In his role, Doug focuses on marketing and brand strategy, sales team leadership, and working closely with members of the management team to best serve company goals.

Doug has over 28 years of National sales and marketing call/contact center leadership, with 10 years of service specifically at Revenue Enterprises. Currently, Doug serves as part of Wyoming HFMA Chapter leadership and has held various roles in Colorado HFMA Chapter leadership for over 9 years.

In his spare time, Doug is very family oriented. Additionally, he loves traveling, cycling, golfing, fishing, hunting, and boating.

Kris Brumley, MBA

President & COO

As President & COO of Revenue Enterprises, Kris Brumley is a collaborative partner within the executive team and a leader for operational functions across the organization. Kris productively shares vision, drives innovation, and supports those around her in a way that elevates them and fosters continuous improvement and results. She has helped create a supportive environment for clients resulting in 98% client retention and a 65% NPS score for all clients and 75% for top clients by revenue.

Kris possesses an MBA in data analytics and has twenty-five years of experience in the healthcare industry, with 19 specifically in revenue cycle. She brings a wealth of customer service experience to her role and has worn many hats at Revenue Enterprises including Director of Business Development, EBO Division Director, and VP of Client Experience Management.

In her personal life, Kris is as busy outside of work as inside. She values spending time with her family, and enjoys fishing, hiking, traveling and interior decorating and design.

Timothy (Tim) Brainerd

CEO

As CEO of Revenue Enterprises for almost 20 years, Tim Brainerd leads by example. He promotes a shared vision and stewards a culture of Integrity, Passion, and Respect. He has assembled and empowered high-performing talent and teams to support customers, facilitate strategic planning and manage the capital of the company. Under his leadership, Revenue Enterprises has doubled in size three times over the past fifteen years while maintaining a culture of caring and gratefulness.

Tim has close to four decades of revenue cycle experience, including nineteen years with RSI
Enterprises. He has been a past president of Colorado Chapter of the HFMA and a presenting speaker on the topic of Leadership. He is a fifteen-year member of Vistage International, the world’s largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization for small and midsize business leaders.

Raised in the Midwest, Tim values humble principles like being respectful, caring, passionate, self-reliant, and most importantly grateful. His most important lesson and the lesson he hopes to pass on in all relationships is living the Golden Rule–do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He is intentional in his choices and believes in making decisions, taking action, being accountable, and loving your neighbors.

Whenever possible, Tim spends his time with his wife of nearly forty years, his adult children, and his grandchildren. His hobbies include fishing, golfing, traveling as well as game nights and sharing great food with his family.