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Medical billing can become one of the most challenging and time-consuming factors of running a successful medical practice. However, it is important for the viability of the business. Time-saving in billing  can allow you to focus more on patient care, and this can be done by optimizing your medical billing landscape and workflow. 

This blog covers multiple strategies you can use for improving your overall medical billing processes. We will also shed light on the importance of outsourcing medical billing services to save time.

Strategies for Time-saving in Billing:

Time-saving in billing for healthcare ensures that providers spend more time taking care of their patients. This not only improves patient care services but also helps boost patient experiences. Some trending time-saving strategies in medical billing include:

1. Streamlining Claims Processing

Individual claims filing is time consuming, especially for specialty care providers who need to file hundreds of claims each week. Simplifying your claims processing is a major tip for improving medical billing productivity. Mass claim creation and filings allows care professionals file in bulk while categorizing by the payer.

2. Outsourcing Collections

Outsourcing of difficult collections is the answer to improving the overall bottom line of healthcare operations. An RCM vendor has the staff and time to dedicate to the collection of difficult payments. This saves healthcare practices time and resources (staff, real estate, and infrastructure), positively impacting their revenue. 

Revenue cycle management services can offer your practice and patients manageable solutions while providing compassionate and understanding service. This improves your healthcare billing productivity while improving the overall reputation of your practice.

3. Insurance Verification and Medical Billing Productivity

Insurance verification is important for securing payment/coverage before providing care services. Through verification of patient coverage your practice can avoid spending valuable time on the work that delays payment down the road. 

Equipped with the right tools, your front-line staff can verify coverage in seconds, which increases medical billing productivity and secures your payment.

4. Identifying Areas of Improvement

Finding areas where your medical billing workflow is lacking, healthcare providers can work towards solutions that improve productivity. Your RCM service provider can help you identify common reasons for claim denials so your practice can start to improve in those areas. 

5. Categorizing Payers

Time-saving in billing also calls for having an organized structure for your billing schedule. Organizing your billing can boost productivity and also secure timely payments. This structure must also have the ability to differentiate between which payers allow for billing at which time of the month. 

6. Patients and Relevant Medical Forms

The biggest nuisances occurring during the medical billing process are claim rejections or delays. This can be due to missing patient signatures or information. Creating a standard process through the front office staff can get you the necessary information and signatures before patients leave the office. It can save a lot of time and difficulty later on.

7. Standardizing all Delinquent Claims

Letting delinquent claims pile up has a significant impact on revenue and the overall cash flow of your practice. Cost and time-saving in billing requires implementing a standardized process through which all delinquent claims can be managed. This ensures that every claim is paid on time. 

For most medical practices, this means outsourcing billing operations to a third party medical billing company.

8. Accuracy in Patient Data Collection

A larger number of claim denials are attributed to patient registration issues. Thus, it is necessary for staff to have the right tools for ensuring accuracy in patient data collection. Healthcare software empowers staff to confirm patient identity, check eligibility, and also identify available insurance coverage. All of this can reduce denials and reimbursement delays. 

9. Improving First-pass Yield

One key way for time-saving in billing and improving the overall process is to optimize the first-pass yield. Focusing on the first-pass yield reduces the number of claim denials and also decreases the time and resources spent on fixing rejected claims. Most healthcare software now allow to easily visualize and measure the first-pass yield rate by offering at-a-glance indications of claim corrections and denial percentages.

10. Conducting Regular Audits

Not being complacent is another way to streamline your medical process. It is recommended to keep digging into your operations and workflows for identifying pain points which can be further optimized. Keep running regular audits for your entire billing operations, also go for surprise internal audits. Internal audits are a great way to keep your entire team and operation audit ready. It also ensures that all information, systems, and processes are being continuously monitored, which ensures compliance and security. 

11. Prioritize Processing of Rejected and Denied Claims

Working out the rejected and denied claims promptly plays a key part in effective management of claims and time-saving in billing. Rejected claims can be resubmitted quickly however claim denials take longer to process as these first need an appeal before resubmission. Maintaining a close relationship is important so you can resubmit these issues promptly. Plus, software can also identify the reasons for claim denials so those can be addressed timely. 

The common reasons for claim denials include: 

  • Inaccurate or incomplete patient information 
  • Healthcare plan changes 
  • Claim submission errors 
  • Untimely claim submissions

12. Follow-up and Effective Communication With Patients

It is important to find a reliable way to stay in touch with patients. Whether it is through an online portal, emails or phone calls. Some EHRs also offer messaging features that help maintain communication with patients.

13. Tracking Financial Performance and Payer Trends

Another important component of RCM is tracking the financial performance in real time. KPIs that need monitoring include the payer scorecards and performance dashboards for tracking revenue improvements, identify areas where workflow challenges exist, and locate root causes by drilling into specific claims. 

This knowledge can make your claims management process efficient by identifying problem accounts that are consistently late with payment, have frequent changes in contact information or are regularly declined.

14. Clear Patient Policies

Ensure that patients understand their payment options and responsibilities. Creating clear statements and bills help with time-saving in billing and also give you patients time to ask questions. This will improve patient experience, and also help ensure they make timely payments. 

15. Organize Medical Records and Statements

Keeping all of your statements and records organized is important. You wouldn’t want to lose patient information or miss catching the unpaid bills. Thus, create a reliable system for storing this information, or invest in a tool which can do this for you.

Conclusion

Time-saving in billing enhances a medical practice’s efficiency. Implementing the simplified time-saving strategies and using technology, care professionals can focus on patient care, also ensuring financial stability. Ensuring accuracy, maintaining communication and outsourcing medical billing services can improve overall productivity. Adopting these practices can help you save time, and boost patient satisfaction levels while also booting practice revenue. 

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