Recently, we discussed the pressure hospital revenue cycle teams face in 2026: staffing shortages, rising denials, and tighter compliance scrutiny, all converging on the same overworked UR staff. Here’s a closer look at one way hospitals are addressing it: Certus Radar™, a utilization management platform built by Brundage Group’s Physician Advisors and revenue cycle experts.
Not a Generic Automation Tool
Certus Radar™ wasn’t built by a software team and handed to clinical staff. It was built by Physician Advisors and revenue cycle specialists who do this work every day, which is why it’s designed around a specific problem: knowing which accounts need physician-level escalation, and when, allowing Utilization Review (UR) staff to spend their time on the patients who need it most instead of working every case manually.
What Actually Matters to UR Teams
A few things come up again and again when hospitals describe what makes the platform useful in practice:
- It runs around the clock. Review coverage doesn’t pause for shift changes, holidays, or staffing gaps: the queue keeps moving even when the team is stretched thin.
- It’s built for compliance, not just speed. Every workflow reflects current clinical and regulatory standards, continuously updated by the physician advisor team behind it.
- It gives leadership real visibility. Real-time KPI dashboards surface the metrics that affect financial performance, rather than retrospective reporting.
The Math Behind the Model
Here’s why the timing matters so much: a single well-timed status upgrade funds roughly 20 automated reviews, with an average upgrade rate above 50%. That’s a return most manual review processes can’t come close to matching, and it’s before factoring in the UR capacity freed up when automation, not staff, handles queue management.
That math compounds every week the process isn’t in place. With a quarter left in the year, every cycle of missed or delayed reviews is a cycle of upgrades, and the revenue behind them that a hospital doesn’t get back. Standing up automation now is what turns the last few months of the year into a recovery window instead of a continuation of the same gap.
How It Works
Under the hood, the process runs in four steps:
- Initial screening.
- Automated scheduling.
- Re-review and ownership transfer.
- Tracking through resolution.
Getting there isn’t an overnight switch, but it isn’t a year-long project either. Most hospitals move from initial discussions to a signed agreement within a couple of months, followed by an onboarding period built around a defined kickoff, a readiness review, and a go-live date. The timeline is predictable, not open-ended.
The Result
Fewer cases fall through the cracks. Documentation becomes more consistent. And leadership gets a clearer line of sight into how utilization management is actually performing across the organization, not just a report of what happened last quarter, but a real-time view of what’s happening now.
What’s Next
In our final post, we’ll look at why the timing for adopting this kind of automation matters right now, including recent changes to how short-stay cases are reviewed, and what hospitals should expect as they establish a new performance baseline.
Want To See How Certus Radar™ Works Inside Your Hospital’s Workflow?
Our team would be honored to walk you through how our automation would function in your specific workflow.
