Effective tips to strengthen revenue cycle management in 2018

With just a few months left for 2018 to get over, have you done enough to strengthen the revenue cycle of your practice? Poor RCM can make any healthcare facility miss out on thousands of dollars of revenue every year. So in order to ensure a better revenue flow, you must streamline processes and also outline and fix RCM problems.

Medical Billing Service

Here are some of the tips to help you earn a healthier RCM for your practice:

•    It helps to automate the process of clinical documentation. This will help you eradicate the root cause of claim denials because manual data entry leaves room for errors. Providers are encouraged to use integrated practice management systems and EHR software for automating the clinical documentation procedure. With a comprehensive practice management solution, data entry burden can be easily reduced, making clinical documentation easier.

Outsourcing Billing process

 •    Real-time claims monitoring is another effective method of strengthening RCM for your practice. It is necessary for providers to monitor the ‘claim submission to reimbursement’ process so that errors can be easily identified. Monitoring will also help rectify issues quickly so that the practice gets paid on time.

•    The third tip on the list to keep your RCM efficient is verification of patient eligibility. Not checking patient eligibility at the beginning can make the collection process extremely difficult. This, in turn, will disturb the complete revenue cycle of your practice. Therefore, it is advised to choose an EHR and practice management software that offers real-time patient eligibility verification. This will help your practice avoid such hassles.

•    Complying with HIPAA and HITECH regulations is equally important. This will not only help maintain the trustworthiness of your practice among patients but also save your practice from heavy penalties (imposed if you fail to comply with the regulations). HIPAA and HITECH compliance is strictly required for keeping the revenue cycle of your practice smooth.

                                     

Chiropractic

•    Last but not the least, make sure that you are maintaining billing transparency. Patients need to be informed about the treatment cost in detail as this will help simplify the collection procedure. If the collection process is smooth, it will help you strengthen the revenue cycle of your practice.

In today’s transitional scenario where the US healthcare industry is moving from fee-for-service to value-based payment, effective RCM has become a necessity to optimise revenue and keep the practice running all the time.

5 Ways to End Your Medical Billing Woes

Are you frustrated about the growing number of billing errors and denials? Is your billing team unable to get clean claims out the door and on time? Medical billing is an often tedious and complex process, especially with ICD-10 coding requirements. However, every expert biller will agree that the success of medical billing boils down to a few basics. If your billers are not handling these factors in the right manner, then you will start experiencing a surge in a number of denied or delayed payments.

                                          

Claims

1.        It is necessary to ensure that your billers are not making mistakes when submitting claims. Even a small typo can lead to a big headache for your practice. The ideal solution to this problem is to have a dedicated staff at your practice for watching and correcting errors before claims are submitted to insurance companies. 

                                 

A/R Clean-up

2.        At times, payments are delayed if your practice isn’t sending enough information to the insurance company. For instance, the most common missing items are the date of onset, date of medical emergency and so on. There shouldn’t be any missed fields when claims are submitted. Your billers need to scrutinise each and every claim and ensure there is sufficient supporting documentation.

3.        The third tip to end your medical billing woes is to get prior authorisation. It is very important for providers to verify whether or not a prior authorisation is required before they perform procedures. The authorisation number needs to be on the claim when billers are ready to bill the procedure.
                                            

Billing and Revenues

4.        Not checking patient eligibility is a very common mistake due to which claims get denied by payers. It is important to check the patient’s insurance card at every encounter because, at times, a patient’s coverage gets terminated by the insurance company or the plan or payer gets changed. Remember, patients change their insurance plans quite often, so checking the details every time will ensure that your practice gets paid on time.

5.        Last but not the least, streamlining the billing process can certainly help you put an end to the frenzy. Many providers remain frustrated due to inexperienced billing staff. Due to their negligence and turnover, their practices have to lose a lot of money. To put an end to this woe, they prefer hiring a medical billing company. Billing companies work closely with practices and their staff to get the billing cycle under control.