Electronic Payment Posting

Many practices are utilizing electronic payment posting and many insurances now use this as their only form of receiving payment. There are still several practices that have not taken advantage of this process. If your practice has not adopted electronic payment posting, consider these points:

• As stated above, many insurance companies are using this as their only form of payment now. If you are not currently accepting electronic payments and remittances then your checks could be withheld until the registration process is complete.
• Electronic posting saves time. Manual posting a large remittance could take as long as a day and in some cases even longer. Electronic posting a large remit may take as little as half an hour, leaving plenty of time throughout the day to allow for more work to be completed.
• Reason codes are attached to the remittance. When electronically posting, your medical software should be set up to recognize any reason or denial codes and correctly adjust the balance off or automatically push the balance to the patient. Attached reason codes allow any employee the ability to fully explain the balance to a patient or insurance company.
• Reduces human error. If a payment keyed incorrectly it could cause a downward spiral in many areas of the revenue cycle. Patients can receive unnecessary statements, adjustments and denials may be missed, payments can be keyed on incorrect patient accounts, daily and end of month balancing could be jeopardized, along with other possible mistakes. With electronic payment posting, each transaction does not have to be manually keyed into the system leaving little room for error.
• Automatically attaches an EOB. This allows any employee to look at the patient account and explain what actions were made on each claim. It is extremely important for a follow-up biller to have the ability to view and work remaining balances or review the denial.
• Allows customization. Most medical software is customizable to your liking. If there is something you want adjusted automatically then you can set your system up to do that. If you would like to review all zero dollar payments, you can do that as well. There are many areas in posting you can customize to your liking.

Implementing electronic payment posting should no longer be left on the back burner. The amount of time and money it can save throughout the process of getting all of the payments posted and balanced is well worth the hassle of implementing the process. Here are a couple of tips to help begin the electronic payment posting installation:

• Medical Software Vendor: Research the setup process. Many times it is as simple as setting up a five-digit payer ID in the transaction ID field and following steps to upload them into the software. Some of the systems are automatically uploaded for you on a daily basis.
• Clearinghouse: Have your clearinghouse run a claims analysis. This will allow you to see which payers have electronic remittance and posting capabilities.

Once implementing electronic payment posting, your practice will never look back. The efficiency that comes with electronic payment posting is by far worth the installation process.

Need more information on electronic payment posting? Contact us today! The MEREM Healthcare Solutions staff is happy to answer any questions and help start the implementation process.