Billing Issues that affect a Practice’s Revenue Cycle

Error-free medical billing is vital for the existence and financial health of medical practices. It can be considered the backbone of healthcare facilities and therefore, it is necessary to ensure that there are no issues when billing for rendered services.

Since there various stakeholders involved, the medical billing process can pose various difficulties for the providers. There is a strong need for them to communicate across payers and departments to ensure that relevant information is being properly captured. They need to have a streamlined medical billing process in order to optimize revenue and reduce days in accounts receivable.

If you are running an independent practice and you wish to overcome revenue-related challenges, then here are some of the billing issues that you need to be aware of:

• If your practice is failing to capture crucial patient information, then it will result in claim reimbursement delays. The process of medical billing starts as soon as the patient interacts with your front-office staff. At this point, it becomes necessary for the staff to collect and document the patient information accurately. This is the information your billers use for filing claims and for billing patients for balances.
• Not informing patients about their financial responsibilities is another billing issue that needs to be handled. Your practice might face collection issues if your staff or billing company is not informing your patients about their financial responsibilities. Patients need to be told that will likely be responsible for their healthcare expenses. Some of the balance should be collected during the patient visit.
• If you want to reduce the administrative burden on your practice and also bring down the AR days, then it is necessary that you get rid of manual claims management procedures. Make sure that your practice is using robust tools for data collection. There needs to be good communication between the office staff and the clinical staff. The denial management procedure of your practice should also be streamlined for better results.

Inaccuracy in coding is also a common billing issues due to which practices fail to get paid. It is necessary that you hire trained coders who are aware of the coding changes and updates. Using incorrect codes results in denials, impacting the revenue cycle of practices. For error-free coding, it is necessary that the front-desk staff communicates with you in case of any documentation issues.