We reviewed two recommended practises for identifying a revenue cycle management system that not only “manages” but also optimises your clinic billing and collections to enhance overall income and enhance your bottom line in part one of this blog article. Here are a few additional strategies to improve your RCM so that you may generate more overall income without adding extra work or patient appointments.
Create clinical workflows with RCM in mind as a best practise.
Many clinics consider the revenue cycle to begin when the appointment is completed and the information is sent to your coders to submit the claim. RCM, in truth, begins the moment your patient schedules an appointment. To avoid claim denials and rejections, your clinical procedures should assist you in sending all of the right information to billing.
Managing RCM: Counting on your medical coders to notice problems and fill in gaps in information after the encounter is an inefficient way to operate a clinic, and it will almost certainly lead to a lot of delays. Even if your claims are finally paid, they may be returned, necessitating a second round of work to explain or complete the missing information. This raises the overall number of days in A/R. There is evidence that the longer you wait to be paid, the lower the percentage of total billed charges you will be able to collect.
RCM optimization: improve your RCM by establishing routines that guarantee accurate data is supplied to your coding team from the start. Consider the following scenario:
Use software that automates the insurance verification process to have your front desk employees verify insurance twice, once when the appointment is scheduled and again the day before the appointment.
Send check-in forms to your patients through email so they may verify information like their Social Security number, address, and insurance at each visit and make any required revisions.
Create templates in your EHR that allow you to automatically fill in needed information and help you remember everything.
Use patient portals and other technologies to preserve accurate information regarding follow-up care, insurance coverage, test results, and other topics.
Before submitting a claim to the payer, use a “claims scrubbing” or a third-party medical billing service to check for trivial mistakes.
Look for revenue cycle management software that can help you discover claims denial tendencies and enhance your operations to reduce them in the future.
