Over the past few months I’ve been writing about patient collections and what can be done in an office to help improve on them. Looking at EOBs and keeping payments up-to-date is the next thing I recommend. It’s easy to get behind. Offices get busy and this may not seem as vital to the revenue cycle as long as those checks are coming in.
If your EOB entry is not up-to-date
- Billing software won’t give accurate reports. With the Accounts Receivable numbers out of date, it’s hard to tell if the biller is doing their job well or if help is needed. Is the 30-day A/R higher than it should be? Is the 60-day A/R growing dangerously? What are the problem areas? With EOBs current, the information needed to manage the billing is there and can be counted on.
- Patient statements can’t go out correctly. Unless the front desk knows exactly what a patient is going to owe at the time of their visit, the practice is depending on those EOBs to come back showing what patient responsibility will be. Correct patient balances means increased likelihood that they will pay.
- Billing problems can be missed for far too long. Some denials come back due to simple billing errors which could be rapidly corrected. Other issues that need a biller’s attention can be missed entirely when EOBs are out of date. A biller should be on top of handling those problems to keep the overall A/R low.
- An office staff can waste time researching, discussing and following up on claims that have already been paid or responded to, which gets expensive in office resources. When EOBs are kept current, everyone is in the know.
For many practices, this is standard operating procedure. For many, it’s an area that suffers. I highly recommend that EOBs are collected at least weekly from every place they come to you, and are properly entered into your system, with any payment issues tackled from there.
If you missed the earlier articles on improving patient collections and would like to check them out, please click here to visit the blog page of our website. As always, I’m here to talk about your billing issues. Give me a call!
Have a great week!
Kat Jordan is the Owner of Orion Billing Services, a professional external billing company. With extensive experience in healthcare billing, Orion is well prepared to help with thorough, knowledgeable claims submission, follow-up and collection.
Call (415) 851-1605 for more information.
The most vital step in improving your patient collections lies in improving your patient benefit verifications. In some offices, insurance verification isn’t done at all. Without it, it’s possible that none of the treatment you give your patient and bill out will be covered by that patient’s policy. This wastes your office resources and also potentially creates an upset patient who believed the services they received would be covered. So it can be very important to your practice to make sure verification is done before the patient is seen, and that it is done well.
from the insurance companies is often not what was expected, it’s time to look into how to improve your insurance verification process. It’s very common that those doing the verification don’t completely understand the process or the questions they are asking. It can be complex, so it’s not surprising. There is almost always room for improvement.
t of allowed amounts from each insurance company you are enrolled with so that you know what they will pay for your services. Then, contacting the insurance companies in advance of treatment to find out what your patient’s deductible, co-pay and coverage limits may be will help to ensure that your patient collections go smoothly, and that the procedures delivered will be paid for. We regularly help our client’s staff to understand and get prepared for thorough patient insurance verification, as an included part of our services. Verification is vital to the success of the billing process for all of us.
Facebooking. Most employees are great – but having been one myself, I know that the incentive to get the job done, and to get it done right the first time, is just not as great when one is being paid by the hour as it can be when one is being rewarded only for what is accomplished.
the billing yourself can be the most expensive way to handle it. As the practitioner and business owner, your time is the most valuable thing you possess. The time you spend on your billing could be spent growing your business or treating patients – the things that nobody else can do for you.
We keep on top of changes in the industry. We keep you informed, and we are here to talk to. We don’t outsource our client’s work to other, far away places. We know your accounts and give them, and you, the attention you need.
hired a large, reputable billing company and then didn’t really look at it again for about a year. Understandably – he was very busy growing his practice, and thought it was all under control since the service should be taking care of everything. Insurance checks were coming in, but as time went on he began to realize that something was off – why were there so many rejections? Why had he never received a call from his big, very expensive billing service when things were going wrong?
All the billing company websites have a similar article to this, but it’s a common question. I regularly speak to doctors who have been doing their billing in-house, but have a less than optimal collection rate. We hear the same problems that offices are having, over and over again.