Accumulated AR- Reasons & Solutions?

An important question that several practices across the US don’t have a clear answer to is- “Why aren’t we collecting more of our A/R?” Lack of efficient revenue cycle and a process for monitoring A/R days are two main reasons why they fail to maintain good finances.

Where practices lack?

• Most A/R managers fail at monitoring the performance of their A/R efforts and solving potential collection problems.
• Most practices struggling with A/R lack a robust process for analysing denials. They don’t have denial managers who can look at denial reasons, fix them and make necessary changes to the process.
• A/R days increase if there is less or no team effort. Practices need to work on a team approach because every staff has an impact on the ability to collect on a claim.
• The optimal range of days outstanding should be 45-60 days. This isn’t achieved easily by most practices because accepting payment at the time of service isn’t commonplace.

What is the solution?

In order to improve medical billing and coding processes and boost year-end collections, it is very important to clean up the A/R. This will help your practice refresh records for the coming year and maintain a steady cash flow.

Here are some of the ways in which your practice can avoid accumulation of A/R days and get timely payments:

• Regular A/R analysis is extremely important if you want to decide whether you want your billers to chase old claims or just make necessary changes and move on. This analysis will also help in resolving errors in claims.
• It will be necessary to make the revenue cycle more front-end driven so that clinical setting and administrative work can remain separate. You will need expert front-desk staff for error-free insurance verification and obtaining pre-authorisation upfront. These things will help in preventing claim rejection and keep A/R days in control.
• You can have an experienced A/R manager on board to analyse denials and implement the right solutions in problem areas. Even hiring a reliable medical billing partner can help manage claims processing and payments effectively.
• As a practice owner, you will have to work on factors that can affect A/R negatively, such as IT problems, lack of trained personnel, less or no communication between revenue cycle departments and so on.