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How to Improve Your Medical Practice
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In the current medical environment, insurance denials can have a major impact in reducing medical practice revenue. With high deductible plans that make patients responsible for a larger share of their medical costs, faulty claim submission, declining insurance reimbursements and the rising costs of implementing technological changes, many practices are finding it difficult to maintain financial stability. Here are some effective ways to increase medical practice revenue:
Proper Schedule Management – A poorly managed schedule can be a main source of revenue loss. For example, an unfilled appointment slot shows time lost for medical billing. Providers must ensure that patient scheduling is being carried out properly and make sure that they are assigned slots even it means overbooking. Creating a Cancellation or No-Show Fee and informing patients about this policy can minimize the impact of last minute cancellations on cash flow.
Prescription Refills – Time and money is lost when prescription refills are approved over the phone and if the patient is not scheduled for an appointment, the lost money cannot be recovered. Implementing a prescription policy about handling of refills and other prescription requests can resolve this. A follow-up period for chronic disease patients should be spelled out. A policy that requires an office visit for an evaluation if the patient needs to refill a prescription after 90 days is also a good idea.
Automation – Automation of the processes helps to save time on data entry and filing. EHR implementation can help in the smooth running of the processes. Data entry can be time consuming to avoid this, convert paper explanation of benefits to electronic format.
Analyze and Benchmark – Practices should have detailed reports on basic metrics such as days in AR aging by payer, the productivity of individual providers, and so on. This will provide an insight on why claims were denied or get held up or which health plans present reimbursement issues. Leading medical billing companies provide customized reports that help physicians identify problem areas in the revenue cycle. Denial management can be enhanced by comparing past performance to current performance or analyzing how well the practice is doing in collecting from specific insurance companies. Benchmarking with a state or national standard would help identify the areas where more effort is needed.
Social Media - Social media engagement makes it easier for patients and physicians to connect outside the exam room. It helps to increase a physician’s online presence which makes it easier for patients to find the doctor and his practice. An online community can be built around the practice by engaging with current and potential customers.
With the constantly changing health plan rules, medical billing and collection has become immensely complicated and labor intensive. Partnering with a medical outsourcing company with professional billing and coding staffs can ensure effective coding and billing for quicker reimbursement, reduced claim denials, increased productivity and enhanced patient satisfaction.