Picture courtesy:  patient.info For a health organization to enjoy a good financial position, its revenue cycle management should be efficient enough to bring in timely payments for the claims submitted and collect the amount due from patients. When either the claims submitted are denied or patients are not paying their dues, it results in unpaid collections and bad debts for the healthcare provider.  One of the ways to reduce revenue losses is having smart patient access. By providing smart patient access, healthcare facilities can see reduced claim denials and improve their revenue cycle management performance. To be able to do this, the RCM services professionals have to collect all the necessary information at the registration process itself. Usually, patients feel that all the work related to registration process is time-consuming and unnecessarily delays the diagnosis and treatment procedure. However, hospital registration process is very critical to colle...

Picture courtesy: Google Images T here are many reasons for the failure of a healthcare facility and claims denial is a major concern for the facilities as it results in missing out on huge revenues that are due. Thus, it becomes vital for healthcare facilities to monitor the claims on a daily basis as a part of revenue cycle management. Usually, it is a practice to review the claims on a periodical basis such as weekly, monthly or quarterly which is very beneficial to analyze the effect of claims on the revenue cycle management and the financial prospects of the facility. But, reviewing the claims on a daily basis has its own plus points and helps in improving the revenues of the facility. By reviewing the claims as and when they are processed and examining all the claims submitted on a particular day at the end of the day ensures that the claims process is being followed appropriately and analyzed for a better revenue cycle management. Incorporating a daily review of t...

One of the biggest problems that healthcare practices are facing is delayed payments from insurance providers. The problems related to collections regarding treatment and services provided may occur due to various reasons and these reasons could be from the side of a healthcare provider or the patients. Every healthcare facility’s aim is to improve its revenue cycle management so as to maintain its financial health and provide quality care to its patients. Healthcare providers need to follow some best practices to improve revenue cycle management by increasing the on-time payments from patients or insurance providers.  Concentrating on collections at the point-of-service is one of the most rewarding practices of revenue cycle management. It is a fact that less than 1/4th of healthcare providers collect patient fees at the point-of-service i.e. at or before service. Many of the healthcare providers even accept the fact that it gets overwhelmingly difficult for them to c...

Optimizing the revenue cycle management for hospital facilities has become necessary with the increase in the number of high-deductible health plans.  Here given are few healthcare market trends that will signify the need for revenue cycle management for better health of healthcare providers.  According to survey results, the out-of-pocket costs for patients have increased by more than 200% in the last 10 years.  Given a choice, more than 40% of employees choose high-deductible plans. Nearly 30% of healthcare providers do not have any idea about the amounts they write-off each year pertaining to in-patient collections. If you employ a robust RCM services provider, then, you will be given an analysis report on your practice management. They will also provide you with some excellent advice on the ways to improve your collections. Around 40% of healthcare providers lose their revenues amounting to nearly $30000 yearly because they fail to collect these amoun...

For a healthy medical practice, it is necessary that there is a proper revenue cycle management system in place. An important aspect of the revenue cycle management is receiving payments for the services provided by the healthcare facilities. Programs like Medicare and Medicaid help the healthcare providers in receiving payments without any delays and help in reducing bad debts that arise from the self-paying patients.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has launched a new data submission system on 2nd January 2018 for clinicians participating in the Quality Payment Program. This new system is brought out with the aim of making the submission of data easier for clinicians and reducing the administrative burden on them. According to the CMS, this new system makes the work of clinicians easier in meeting MACRA’S reporting requirements and they can spend more time in providing quality care to patients rather than doing paperwork and filling forms. Quality Pay...

Collecting money that people owe you is a tough task. It is even more difficult for the healthcare providing organizations to collect the money from the patients even for the overdue bills. Though it is not a gratifying job, it has to be carried out as a part of the revenue cycle management for the sake of the financial health of the organization. Let’s take a look at few tips that help in contacting patients and improving collections of a healthcare facility. Be clear with pricing: When a patient visits the facility, he or she may not be aware of the services or procedures that will be availed and the associated costs with the services availed. The patient does not have knowledge if the costs fall within his/her budget. It is better to keep the patient informed about the services being provided and the expenses that would be incurred for those services.  Train the employees: Every single employee of the organization represents the organization and in some way or ...