Every hospital, physician practice and billing company even today continue to struggle with the increasing time period of ‘long receivable bills’. There may be numerous reasons for the delay but one among them is the tedious process of receiving payments from insurance companies. What can be done to speed up the recovery process and improve the efficiency while focusing on providing Quality Patient Care? Let’s look at our successful work flow and strategies to deal with AR. HEALTHCARE ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLES COLLECTION PROCESS A systematic Accounts Receivables collection process enables you to handle the bills on time and keep the financial cycle in motion. Promantra’s 4 step process can handle the entire AR process in a structured way covering every phase of AR management. Access and Review Receivables Aging Report Generation Accounts Receivable Calling Analysis and Reporting 3 IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES FOR BETTER HEALTHCARE ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLES MANAGEMENT Older the bill gets; harder and more costly they become to collect. The bills have to be handled on time before they slip out of hand. 1. Analyze your AR in detail: There should be a distinct line of understanding on how you look at patient-paid AR and insurance AR. Your team must be in a position to understand what’s driving these two. If by analysing you observe that there is a decline on the insurance side, it’s an indication of larger issue (third-party or centralized billing function) or any front-desk errors. On the other side if patient AR is mounting, front-desk processes errors or improper employee communication with patients on financial policy could be the prime reasons. Having a proper efficient starting point is very important for a AR process. 2. Prioritize Insurance Verification: Many issues are sorted out if there is a result oriented process that covers patient verification, insurance coverage and eligibility check as these are the sources of never understanding issues in AR. A process is more efficient and in line with RCM if we can check insurance eligibility of a patient before he is present at the clinic, a strong indicator of AR. Any mistake or incorrect verification of patient eligibility will lead to huge time losses trying to resolve open claims. 3. Engage patients: Patient engagement is found to be very useful in healthcare with respect to AR processes. Any bill or request will not be a surprise to a patient if he is involved early in the settings. This step also has other benefits like, informing the patients about payment policy, reminding them about balances left and also, help in staying in touch with them. Have a technologically successful portal in place for the patients to login and connect with the practice and pay their bills. Through this, any change in healthcare policy can be easily communicated to patients. We handled customers having enormous piled up bills and were successful in dealing with them on time. Concentrate on your patients while Promantra handle the most difficult part of your Revenue Cycle Management; AR management.
Topics
