The financial security and expansion of your practice greatly relies on streamlined revenue cycle processes. Poor management of the healthcare revenue cycle results in decreased effective revenue collection and longer accounts receivable (AR) days.
The core of revenue cycle management is accounts receivable since it helps you get paid more quickly, which leads to more profitable operations. Ensuring efficient collection and keeping track of AR days are key components of streamlining the healthcare revenue cycle. This can be swiftly done with medical billing outsourcing services.
A properly managed revenue cycle results in faster and less laborious revenue generation. From doctors, nurses, and other clinicians to the medical billing and coding team and front office workers, everyone has a job to do.
Thus, our team at Medisys Data Solutions is here with simple strategies to improve collection and decrease AR days.
1. Leverage Technology To Reduce AR Days in Oncology Billing
Today, a variety of software tools are available to correctly estimate the out-of-pocket expenses that patients may incur due to their insurance coverage. If you are able to give them this kind of knowledge beforehand, for instance, before they receive pricey medical attention or medication.
A patient is more likely to make an early payment if they are already aware that the estimations have been given. Healthcare practitioners can quickly ascertain the status of various bills and payments with the use of medical billing and coding software.
Additionally, when a healthcare provider’s primary EHR is integrated with the financial system, the results are better. As a result, the revenue cycle’s components are automated, ensuring the submission of accurate claims.
2. More options to patients for paying their bills
Patients are more likely to pay their bills when they have a variety of payment alternatives, including credit card payments, cheque payments, online payment options, and mobile apps.
Patients can find it simple to pay their bills thanks to the skilled medical professionals involved in the procedure. You can therefore cut down on your accounts receivable days with the assistance of the medical team and 24-hour online payment options.
So, whether it’s an online payment gateway or a mobile bill payment application, healthcare companies should definitely encourage digital payments. In addition to speeding up the bill-paying procedure, the digital payment option is regarded as being more secure.
3. Submission of a Clean Claim
Try to include accurate information on the patient’s demographics, insurance information, billing information, provider information, procedure codes, a list of diagnosis codes, and other details like preauthorization when submitting claims. If you initially submit clean claims, things become significantly simpler.
Clean claims will result in faster reimbursements. Setting objectives for filing clean claims is a good idea. The industry average for a clean claim is 90%, while Medisys Data Solutions, a medical billing agency, submits clean claims for all of its clients at a rate of over 95%.
4. Set an AR objective
Setting an AR objective is one of the crucial steps towards lowering your AR days. This objective must be set in terms of acceptable AR days. What does your facility’s definition of an adequate amount of AR days entail? The number of acceptable AR days will vary depending on the facility type and the variety of payers you have, among other things. It will be simpler to reduce your AR days if you have a clear, yet achievable, target. Your team can discuss your AR objectives while brainstorming. Post these objectives somewhere where you, your billing team, and everyone else can see them and be inspired to work toward them.
5. Target Big Spenders
The top 5–6 payers who have billed the most AR over the past 90 days are your potential targets. Finding denial trends for each payer will be made easier by adopting a payer-specific strategy to resolving AR. Every payment has their unique set of billing and coding requirements thus, you must handle denials according to each payer.
Your team can examine claims payer-by-payer in an effort to identify the main reason for the refusal and appeal it appropriately. Once you’ve discovered the answer, you can use it to fix other denied claims from the same payer. You can always call payer representatives and request a settlement, as well as the precise explanation for the denial. We usually advise speaking with insurance agents as it will minimize the rework.
In conclusion, the actions listed below will aid in lowering AR days:
- Establish objectives in terms of AR days. Depending on the facility type and its unique mix of payers, there are several optimum AR days.
- By ensuring timely and correct documentation for coding and billing cases and sufficient revenue cycle staffing, work toward timely, accurate documentation.
- Set a deadline for filing clean claims. Establish a deadline of 48 hours from the time the necessary paperwork is received for the filing of clean claims.
- Experts from the billing, coding, AR team, and providers should offer assistance where needed as part of a denial management team.
- To reduce the amount of time it takes for payments to be made, make sure you have procedures in place for tracking denials and that your staff is aware of these procedures.
- One of the most pressing problems the healthcare sector is currently dealing with is outstanding accounts receivable. Organizations frequently look for the best solutions to lower their receivables that are over 30 days old as well as ways to avoid them altogether. Here are the top recommendations for lowering AR days in healthcare.
Conclusion
Medical billing and coding services are one of the most crucial components of running a healthcare organization since healthcare firms must contend with the constantly shifting financial landscape. By using the above-mentioned advice, any healthcare business can decrease their accounts receivable (AR) days.
To guarantee that your staff has access to training on requirements for Medicare, and significant private insurers, educate staff on payer-specific policies. Your practice can efficiently reduce AR days by partnering with Medisys Data Solutions for accounts receivable management services. We investigate denied claims, keep tabs on unpaid amounts, follow up on pending claims, and produce recurring reports. Getting medical billing services from the best medical billing and coding company in the US is merely one tap away!
