Fantasy or Possibility?
Do you have aged revenue of longer than 60 days sitting on your ledger? Do you know how much that is costing your practice every day?
The hidden costs of uncollected revenue can severely harm the financial health and cash flow of your medical practice. If your aged revenue is high, it is likely improving some other entity’s finances rather than yours.
Practices that get paid faster – from insurance companies and patients – fundamentally have smoother running operations. How much of your revenue is sitting in 60-day, 90-day or even 120-day aged revenue? Would you be surprised to learn that a best practice is to maintain accounts receivables below the 50-day mark, but that the ideal is 30 to 40 days?
Revenue generation and management is as important to a medical practice as it is to any other enterprise, but it’s a skill that may not come as naturally to you as a physician who is typically more focused on clinical patient care. Without questions, clinical care is foundational to a strong and reputable medical practice, but if you want to continuously reinvest in the practice, meet payroll and pay your own creditors on time, you can’t ignore savvy revenue management.
Don’t Leave Your Money on the Table
Aged revenue not only leaves a lot of your money on the table as uncollected, it impedes your practice from properly forecasting anticipated weekly and monthly revenue and income.
In this month’s guide, “Aged Revenue: How Much Money Are You Leaving on the Table?” we explore best practices at every stage of billing, from credentialing to collections.
The good news is that almost everyone working in your medical practice can help substantially improve revenue collection and reduce insurance claim denials, from the front desk to the practitioners so treatments are properly coded and processed for reimbursement.
So where is the best place to start? Reviewing your current billing processes and staff responsibilities is a good idea to ensure your practice is avoiding as much patient post-appointment billing as possible. There is no sense wasting time and money collecting co-pays from patients when your front-desk associates can do that more easily before the patient’s appointment.
Claims and Collections Best Practices
Make this a prominent rule in your practice so your business manager and associates can focus on the more complex insurance company and clearinghouse credentialing, negotiations and ultimate timely payment.
One of the first things that will immediately impact your collections and cash flow is to identify all your slow payers, which may reveal chronic issues with certain carriers and patients for you to address.
In this month’s guide, we take a deep dive as to how your practice can improve cash flow through proper revenue cycle management, and clearly defined processes, workflows and staff responsibilities all aimed at reducing insurance claim denials and improving revenue collection rates.
Click here to get control of your revenue management today.