Role of Medical Billing Companies in Following up Aging Account Receivables
Why is A/R follow-up considered crucial in the medical billing process? Because it directly reflects on your bottom lines. Medical billing companies play a pivotal role in balancing the account receivables at practices. Let’s see how;
For shorter revenue cycles
To meet this goal, medical billing companies do the necessary steps in minimizing the amount of time on outstanding accounts. Here, the strategy is to track down each and every patient account that are not fully cleared. This is followed by designing a suitable action plan to ensure payment. Faster the account receivable touches zero, shorter will be the revenue cycle. Now, this is key for better inflow of revenue.
Recovering missing claims
How do claims go missing? It was a usual scenario earlier when claims were submitted on paper. Along with the huge piles of paperwork involved connected to each patient, chances are the staff misplace the claims or send them out to the wrong insurance provider. Without proper follow-up, claim once gone missing is a payment write-off. By the time provider realizes the claim was sent to the wrong payer, it would have exceeded the time limit for getting reimbursed. But with the new age electronic filing of claims implemented by medical billing companies, everything is accountable and easily tracked.
Collecting patient balance
Medical billing companies greatly help the providers in collecting financial obligations from the patient. A huge amount of money is lost from the practice solely from writing-off the patient balance. When payments go long overdue after treatment, it is hard to complete the financial liability from patient. Most of the time, patient is not even aware how much they owe to the provider. This happens when billing invoice sent postally does not reach the patient, or when they are not made aware of the payment breakdown between them and the insurance company.
With the help of patient engagement services and online portals, patient is made aware of their obligations to the provider. Billing companies also help in coverage verifications prior to the treatment so that the patient can be educated on payment breakdown. This aids the front desk staff to collect necessary co-pays and deductibles, resulting in reaching zero account receivables faster than ever.
Effective denial management
Medical billing companies employ a special team of professionals trained to manage claim denials. A denied claim can be worked upon, revised and re- submitted if one understands the right reason behind the denial. Roles of the denial management team includes keeping track of the claim status and find out why the claim was denied in the first place. If it is a compliance issue or clerical error, they fix it quickly to ensure faster reimbursement.
There were instances where insurance companies have denied claims for no apparent reason. If the claims are eligible for reimbursement, the provider has every right to appeal for reconsideration. For this, professional billing companies’ provider legal services to better equip the provider to appeal for the denied claims. Clearly, no valuable service will go unpaid in the end.
To conclude, medical billing companies are keen on analysis and follow up of account receivables considering how important it is to the financial stability of the practice. Moreover, they can pin down the possible reasons behind aging account receivables, and advise the staff on process improvement. Because, in the end what matters to you is maintaining the balance between revenue inflow and practice expenses.
