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Email: info@prgmd.com | Call: +1 (833) 888-7725
Business hours: 8:00 to 5:00 | Monday to Friday
Accounts receivable (AR) represents the outstanding reimbursement owed to healthcare providers for the medical services and treatments delivered to patients. It plays a critical role in the overall financial health of a medical practice, directly impacting cash flow, revenue stability, and operational efficiency. When AR is not managed effectively, delayed payments, claim denials, and aging balances can quickly disrupt a practice’s financial performance.
Whether the financial responsibility lies with insurance payers or patients, healthcare professionals must actively monitor and manage their AR to ensure timely collections. Rising patient deductibles, evolving payer policies, and stricter compliance requirements have made AR management more complex than ever. As a result, practices can no longer rely on reactive billing approaches.
Boosting AR productivity requires a proactive strategy that includes accurate billing, consistent follow-ups, denial prevention, and streamlined workflows. Many practices achieve this by outsourcing medical billing services, gaining access to specialized expertise, advanced technology, and dedicated AR follow-up teams. By strengthening AR processes and focusing on efficient collections, healthcare providers can reduce revenue leakage, shorten reimbursement cycles, and maintain long-term financial stability.
The longer AR goes unpaid, the less likely it is that healthcare providers will receive payments at all. Moreover, after 120 days, providers can only expect 10 cents per dollar owed in total.
Ideally, the AR cycle starts with the healthcare providers billing patients or patients’ insurance providers. Although it is indicated as money owed, ARs are not assets. Furthermore, the providers classify AR in terms of their age:
Not being able to collect payments or reimbursements lengthens the AR cycles and risks revenue leakage. Revenue leakage is when the treatment or care provided by healthcare professionals is not reimbursed, making providers suffer a loss.
For instances like this, what are some ways to boost AR productivity?
To maximize AR productivity, efficient financial management and AR follow-up are two backbones of the healthcare RCM process. AR management in medical billing reduces write-offs and thus ensures timely payments. Below are some of the best practices for boosting AR productivity in healthcare:
Healthcare professionals must verify patient insurance eligibility before performing services or giving treatments. On-time insurance verification reduces the likelihood of rejections and claims denials, resulting in timely payments. Furthermore, patient insurance verification ensures the correct capturing of insurance information during patient registration.
To boost AR productivity, healthcare providers must communicate openly with patients regarding finances. Clearly defined payment terms will ensure that providers are more likely to avoid delays with AR. In most instances, healthcare providers can reduce delayed or delinquent payments by ensuring that all payment expectations are clear for patients before treatment. Creating a payment responsibility document for new patients to sign on their first appointment gives them a clear view and idea of what is expected from them regarding payments.
Accuracy in medical coding ensures timely and accurate payments and helps boost AR productivity. Coding errors lead to claim denials, which result in payment delays. Healthcare professionals must have an expert and certified coding team that stays up-to-date with the current coding regulations and guidelines.
Payment delays are an undeniable fact in the medical AR recovery process. Therefore, it is vital that all of the outstanding and unpaid accounts are managed adequately. Close to 1.5 percent is written off as a bad debt, while 93 percent have to deal with payment delays. The longer outstanding accounts are left untouched, the less likely they will be paid. To boost AR productivity, it is vital to notify patients frequently, through phone calls and letters, even using stronger collection processes – if and when necessary.
The main goal of running constant AR reports is to improve AR productivity by keeping the accounts receivable days low, which is most effective for the healthcare RCM. The particular procedure necessitates continuous tracking of accounts receivables. Moreover, it is helpful to carefully analyze the data from month to month to highlight the disturbing trends or the ongoing issues with payment collections. The AR report must examine things including:
One way your practice can boost AR productivity is by requiring patients to pay out the co-pays or the subsequent bills right in the office. Doing so will massively cut back on the accounts receivable for healthcare practices. Some medical practices require upfront deposits and percentages for treatments or procedures. Doing so does not cut down on a number of accounts, however it can cut down the monies owed.
Ideally, upfront payments become revenue, supporting improved cash flow for healthcare providers.
Monitoring claim denials and appeals is vital to boosting AR productivity. It helps in the identification of trends and patterns of the denials. Healthcare practices must keep track of appeals and denials, as it helps analyze data to identify the root causes. Overall, monitoring of claims helps improve the RCM process and reduce denials.
Facilitating patients by offering them multiple payment plans to improve collections can also help boost AR productivity. Furthermore, creating a well-rounded system to manage payment plans and then implementing them correctly is vital for the financial health of your healthcare practice.
To boost AR productivity, providers or their billers can increase the frequency of billing cycles. The more frequently/quickly payers are billed for the services, the sooner those outstanding amounts can be paid. That said, many providers still send out bills once a month, which can introduce delays with accounts receivable.
It will be good to increase the frequency of billing cycles to speed up the processes. For instance, your practice can submit or mail insurance and patient invoices weekly.
Efficiency and accuracy in medical billing are essential to boost AR productivity and keep AR days as low as possible. Something as tiny as a claim error can delay payment from insurance providers for weeks or months. If your in-house billing procedures and team are not as efficient as they should be, consider outsourcing to third-party medical billing companies.
After the Affordable Care Act’s passing in 2010, most Americans signed up for higher-deductible plans to reduce their monthly expenses. However, this choice leaves most patients responsible for a high percentage of their healthcare bills. Furthermore, recovering reimbursements from individual patients brings many more challenges and a significant burden on AR processes. Therefore, implementing the above 14 best practices to boost AR productivity can help providers achieve a more successful healthcare RCM.
No. Automation helps prioritize work, but human expertise is critical for appeals, negotiations, and complex cases.
Most practices should aim for 30–40 AR days. Anything consistently above 50 days signals workflow or follow-up issues.
Verifying insurance before treatment reduces claim rejections and denials, leading to faster reimbursements.
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