Revenue Cycle Management: 5 Things To Monitor (Part 1)

Revenue Cycle Management for the medical industry can be defined as processing claims and managing payments and revenue. It includes multiple high-importance duties such as determining a patient’s eligibility, collecting their copays, producing correct coding for a claim, receiving payment for claims, and following up with denied claims.

Why Is Revenue Cycle Management Important?

As a medical billing service, we know that poor revenue cycle management can be disastrous for a practice. A failure to stay on top of revenue cycle management could cause a major back up in paperwork, resulting in poor workflow. A lag in workflow means patients will be waiting longer to be seen, decreasing the number of patients that can be fit into a day’s schedule.

In addition, your staff will be working harder to get back up to speed. Often this results in missed steps and more frequent errors, causing practices delayed payments.

Even worse, claims are regularly denied and never submitted. A back up in the office increases the number of overlooked denied claims and results in a major loss in revenue.

What to Monitor In Revenue Cycle Management

Because we so strongly believe that good revenue cycle management can improve a practice’s overall productivity levels, thus generating more earnings, we have decided to put together a 6-part blog series explaining the 5 most important things every provider should be monitoring. This includes:

1. Credentialing– Helps ensure your practice gets paid.
2. Charge Lag- Features revenue flow delays to improve workflow.
3. POS Collections- The importance of upfront copays on total revenue.
4. Days in A/R- Gain an understanding of the efficiency in your company and brings light to issues that may have gone unnoticed.
5. Fee Schedules- These are critical in assessing if billing is accurate and in compliance to the payors, and can help determine ways to increase revenue.

As you can see, each topic offers great opportunities to improve. As a medical billing service, we know that gaining control of your revenue cycle management can be the key to keeping a practice afloat in a time where patients are hesitant to seek care due to money.

In addition, physicians will be given the gift of time. A smoother running operation allows physicians to focus on what really matters: their patients. Finally, they can do the job they worked so hard for helping people be well.

Why Listen To A Medical Billing Service Company?

Why listen to a medical billing service company, you ask? Perhaps your revenue cycle management seems fairly strong, or maybe your practice has yet to experience a major back-up in denied claims.

That is all great news for your practice, but here is the deal…you could be doing better. That’s right! It seems like everything is in place, and operations are running smoothly, but without an overall assessment of your revenue cycle, you can’t be sure all things are going strong. Why wouldn’t you want to improve your chances of providing better healthcare? At improving your revenue?

By taking the advice of a medical billing service, you can gain a deeper understanding of your processes. You are doctors or practices that provide a service. How do you feel when you hear about a patient who has a cold and turned to Google for medical advice? You are the experts, they should listen to you. Similarly, medical billing services are proficient and skilled at assessing medical revenue cycles. We can help, and we want to help!

We hope you stay tuned for our next blog that will narrow in on the importance of credentialing!

Need help now? Contact us today.