Chief Revenue Cycle Officer (CRCO) Forum: 2026 Healthcare Revenue Cycle Conference

A healthcare revenue cycle conference brings together the healthcare leaders responsible for how health systems get paid, covering denials and prior authorization, medical billing and coding changes, front-end operations, payer strategy, compliance, and revenue cycle technology. Formats range from large trade shows with exhibit halls to small executive forums. The CRCO Forum is the second kind.

Healthcare revenue cycle management is the process that tracks a patient's care from registration through final payment, including eligibility verification, prior authorization, coding, claims submission, denials management, and collections. Proper revenue cycle management ensures hospitals maintain steady cash flow to cover operating costs, and efficient operations help providers reduce payment delays and claim errors.

Conferences built for medical billers, coders, and practice managers focus on day-to-day billing operations, certification, and practice management, and they serve those medical billers and coders well. The CRCO Forum is built for the executives who own revenue cycle strategy for an entire system and carry the business accountability for it. There is no exhibit hall, no booths, and no open registration. Sessions are closed-door and member-led, and attendance is capped by a strict 1:1 health system to industry ratio.

Chief Revenue Cycle Officers and senior revenue cycle professionals from leading health systems, including the leaders who own the front end, billing operations, denials and appeals, revenue integrity, and payer contracting. They are joined by an equal number of senior industry executives, typically CEOs, Chief Growth Officers, strategic product leaders, and consultants.

The CRCO Forum is hosted twice a year in locations across the United States, and each event runs 2.5 days in a retreat-style setting. Upcoming dates and locations are listed in the Upcoming Dates section on this page.

Recent focus areas include denials and prior authorization, payer strategy and contract negotiation, policy disruption and its effect on reimbursement, rising uncompensated care, medical billing and coding integrity, patient access and front-end financial engagement, artificial intelligence in revenue cycle operations, and cross-functional work with supply chain and IT.

Industry conferences feature sessions on regulatory updates and compliance, which matters because revenue cycle management is how health systems navigate complex federal, state, and payer regulations. At the CRCO Forum, that material is presented in the context of what members are implementing, so the discussion covers not only what a rule says but how peer organizations are operationalizing it.

Peer networking reveals practical approaches that may not be in textbooks. Published guidance describes what should work. Leaders who have already run an AI pilot, restructured a front-end team, or escalated a payer dispute can describe what it cost, what broke, and what they would sequence differently. That is the education members consistently say they cannot get anywhere else.

Health systems are evaluating artificial intelligence across prior authorization, appeal generation, coding, and denials prevention, with automation ranking as both a top priority and a top improvement opportunity for the function. The recurring theme in Forum discussions is optionality. Leaders are structuring shorter commitments and weighing EHR-native technology against third-party tools while the market matures.

Industry Members participate as peers, not as vendors. They join working sessions, contribute perspective from across their customer base, and listen to how decision makers frame problems. Industry Members may submit abstracts to be presented as non-promotional sessions, with speakers and content selected by The Health Management Academy and its health system leaders.

Registration is by application through the Apply Now form on this page. There is no public registration link. The Health Management Academy reviews each application against current member priorities and the 1:1 attendance ratio, then follows up to confirm fit and walk through upcoming events.

Yes. Membership includes year-round access to the Executive Insights Hub, with pre-Forum briefings, post-event debriefs, quarterly trend reports, market intelligence, persona-based insights, and on-demand healthcare education modules for the wider team.