Medical Billing Tips

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Medical billing tips can give you the means to secure your practice’s financial health. We are aware that the current times are making earning revenue difficult. Our list of tips can help turn your financial troubles around to help you secure a prosperous future.

Collections

You need a robust collections process to secure your practice’s financial health. Establishing a process for your collections procedures greatly improves your collections rate.

Your collections process must include these steps:

Create Clear Terms: Let your patients know the exact steps when paying debts. Include this as part of your new-patient paperwork and send regular reminders of their financial obligations. You can prevent them from claiming ignorance for delinquency by following this step.

Collect patient information: Get as much information from your patients as possible, including contact numbers, address, email, workplace address, etc. Take a photo ID of your patients on their first visit in case you hire a collections agency.

Address Verification: Be sure to check in with your patients regularly to find out if they have the same contact information and address. You need to reach your patients to send bills and collect what is due.

Get patient consent to leave messages: Get your patient’s consent to send them messages on their voice mails regarding billing in their new patient paperwork.

Co-pays reminders: Please remind your patients of their co-pay and why you need it. Train your staff about the topic to allow them to answer any questions.

Regularly verify eligibility: Get your patient’s insurance card for every visit to verify their coverage.

Collections: Collect the balances and co-pays upfront to avoid having to chase for them later.

Payment options: Quickly establish what payment options you offer. Be clear with your patients about your payment plans. You can also post signs on your walls that say you accept checks, cash, and credit cards, or whatever payment methods you prefer.

Letters: Prepare to send letters to your patients about their due and overdue balances. Send letters because they carry more weight than voicemails.

Claim Management

Many of your claims are denied because of either a lack of information or wrong information. You need to fill up the claims properly or suffer denials that could set back your payment schedule by months.

Here is a list of information to double-check.

  1. EOB
  2. Duplicate billing
  3. Patient information
  4. Poor documentation
  5. Insurance information
  6. Missing or unclear codes

Double-check the information above when you fill up claims. Taking the extra time to double-check your claims can spare you headaches and time.

Outsource

Outsourcing is a great option especially, if your practice is new. A starting practice barely has any funds to its name, which minimizes the amount of staff you can hire. You will be put in a tight spot because your billers and admin staff will have to be filled by only one or two people. Your overworked staff will likely make errors and lead to poor collections for your practice.

Here are a few problems outsourcing can solve:

Coding

As you know, insurance payers are very strict when handling coding. They won’t give you a cent if there is even one error in your claims. Even if you get your coding right, updates are implemented regularly. You will need to send your staff to seminars to keep up. Thankfully, medical billing firms have the resources to train their staff without any additional charge to your practice. The firms can handle all your coding needs.

Denial Management

Your practice will inevitably suffer from claim denials. A denial doesn’t mean you cannot get paid anymore. You need to resubmit the claim with corrections. It can be difficult to find errors in your claims. Outsourcing companies specialize in denial management. They know how to find claim errors and correct them promptly, so none of your revenue slips through the cracks.

You can also save money by hiring less staff when you outsource some of your business functions. Outsourcing provides you with the means to earn more and spend less.

Give us a call to find out the other ways we can help your practice. Synapse Medical Billing has been in the business for 20 years and is ready to serve your practice.

In conclusion, fixing collections, claim management, and trying outsourcing can help your practice earn more revenue to grow. Synapse Medical Billing stands ready to take care of all your billing needs to give you more time with your patients.