Are you interested in saving money? Well, let’s take a look at four ways to improve revenue cycle management (RCM) for your medical practice.
1. Take Compliance and Denials Seriously
With the transition to ICD–10, it has never been more important to take both compliance and denials seriously. For improving your revenue cycle, understanding compliance will take some time. However, it will reduce the headaches you have to deal with down the road.
You will also want to focus on denials. For this, keep these two things in mind – more than 50 percent of appealed denials get paid, and it is always worth fighting for every claim made against the insurance provider. If you hire someone specifically for accounts receivable, you can have the revenue they generate pay for their work.
2. Consider Training To Better Understand The Process
Anyone in the medical field has already gone through years of intense education to become the professionals they are today. However, running a successful business requires more than just a medical degree. In particular, it requires knowing tax laws, issues with compliance, and a good understanding of revenue cycle management. To solve this, we recommend taking a course on RCM to better understand what’s required of it. This coursework will reveal areas where you can then improve.
3. Utilize Management Software
If you want to handle RCM in house, then management software can be your most valuable resource. It will help you track your revenue, your outstanding requests from insurance companies, your patients records and many more, just to name a few. In addition, it can provide assistance for what you may need to do in certain situations.
4. Consider Outsourcing
A medical billing company works on an economy of scale, where their services become inexpensive due to the sheer volume of work they do. When done correctly, they will pay for themselves (and possibly more). They will have experienced technicians who know how to approach denials as well as experts you can speak with to improve your RCM. While you will have to pay for the services, you will gain much in the amount of time and energy saved by outsourcing.
For handling revenue cycle management, the most valuable resources are time and experience. If your practice has opened somewhat recently, or if you don’t have the time to handle RCM properly, then it’s best to look into hiring an outside company.
MBA Medical has years of experience helping practices make revenue cycle management more fluid and organized. Schedule a call with us to learn about our process, and if it’s the right move for your practice.