Outsourced Medical Billing Companies Impact on Healthcare Providers Financial Stability

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Healthcare providers financial stability is essential for private healthcare practices to grow and keep providing valuable healthcare services to our nation. Today we will talk about how Outsourced Medical Billing Companies impact positively on healthcare businesses’ financial stability and some key metrics in financial reports so we could understand finance better and manage our healthcare businesses effectively. When we talk about the financial statements for medical practices or medical practices’ financial policy, we must think about the basic question “what is the purpose of medical practice’s financial policy?”. Medical practice owners need to regularly check the financial health of their healthcare business such as medical practice financial ratios or financial statements.

Analyzing the financial health of your medical practice can be easy when you have the right indicators to look at. The majority of the physicians or practice owners are not aware of the financial indicators they need to check to get better insight into the financial stability or financial health side of the business. Thinking this way can keep the decision-makers informed about the medical practice’s financial ratios. It also helps to update the medical practice’s financial policy to make strategic decisions in a timely fashion. The financial policy of a medical practice plays an important role in keeping your medical billing and collection process smoother and keeping your practice cash flow at an optimum level to achieve higher performance. There are many creative ways to maximize cash flow in healthcare but most importantly you need to look at the financial statements for medical practices to make decisions about the upcoming changes in your medical practice financial policy. In some scenarios, you might need to improve healthcare practices workflow to gain access to the financial stability of your healthcare facility. If you are doing in-house billing and facing cash flow problems, you might need help from the Best Medical Billing Company to realign your strategies.

Financial Statements for Medical Practices

First and most importantly, you need Medical Billing Services which could provide you could provide you the monthly financial statements for your Medical Practice to keep you informed about insurance payments, patient payments, and pending accounts receivable reports. If you do not have the right Medical Billing Solution which could generate valuable Medical Billing Analytics for you, you won’t be able to drive long enough without looking at the dashboard of your business.

Medical Practice Financial Policy

You must design your medical practice financial policy on how to collect payments from insurance and patients. Having a Best Medical Billing Company by your side will help you to fix the problem of collecting insurance payments for medical claims but that’s not enough. You should think about the most innovative and creative Ways to Improve Patient Payment Collections. At the beginning of every year, your patient balance would increase due to deductible processing and you must think about the different ways how to collect deductibles from patients this should be a part of your Medical Practice Financial Policy and this would help you to look at the medical practice financial ratios.

What is the Purpose of a Medical Practice’s Financial Policy?

The purpose of a medical practice’s financial policy is to create, maintain and inform your patients about the SOPs (standard operating procedures) to collect pending payments from patients after the claim’s processing from insurance companies or collect directly from patients in case of self-pay visits. If we talk about the broader aim of Medical Practice’s Financial Policy, it should include the Medical Billing and Collections Process as well. When you start thinking about collecting more from insurance and patients for your Medical Practice, you should have a dedicated medical billing team to work on Denial Management for your Healthcare / Medical Practice to collect every dollar from the insurance company and then send a statement to the patient for collection of patient responsibility.

Medical Practice Financial Ratios

Analysis of medical practice financial ratios helps you to determine your medical practice’s financial health. You can compare the results of these ratios with health industry benchmarks to make improvements. Medical practice financial ratios can be calculated in two different ways. Here we will talk about some financial terms to help you better understand the concept of Medical Practice Financial Ratios.

Medical Practice Financial Health with Current Ratios Method

You can assess the financial health of your medical practice with the current ratio. In this method, you have to make the total sum of liabilities and assets of your medical practice and then divide the current assets by your medical practice’s current liabilities for the year with its total cash value. The higher value of your medical practice current ratio will show the healthy indicator which is generally between 1-3. If your medical practice’s current ratio falls below 1 then it’s an alarming sign and you should really have serious doubts about your medical practice’s stability.

Medical Practice Financial Health with Acid-Test Ratios or Quick Ratio Method

If you would like to check your medical practice’s financial health stability analysis with a Quick Ratio Known as Acid-Test Ratio, you should divide cash in hand (available cash), short-term investments portfolios, and account receivables sum total by the current liabilities of your medical practice. If the result gives you a number of more than 1, then your medical practice has the ability to bear the current liabilities’ financial burden and if the number is less than 1 then you should look closely at the numbers and reconsider making some improvements by the next fiscal year to have better financial stability. Please note that when we talk about account receivables, if you don’t have accurate medical billing analytics, you can’t bring inaccurate numbers. To have better access to accurate medical billing analytics, you should rely on a Top Rated Medical Billing Company that can deliver on-demand reports for your Account Receivables (Unpaid/Aged Pending Medical Claims).

These are just the numbers to run but sometimes you can even feel the financial stability by just looking at your current cash flow and income/expenses sheet. To avoid financial loss and improve the Practice’s Stability, you need a Good Medical Billing Service so you could focus on business growth with peace of mind. If you need help in Medical Billing, Contact Us today and talk to a Medical Billing Expert to check the Best Medical Billing Solution for your Medical Practice.

Medical Billing Services Outsourcing to Improve Medical Practice Cashflow

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Medical Billing Services Outsourcing and Impact on Medical Practices Revenue and Cashflow

Identifying the right diagnoses, writing prescriptions, or operating on patients is only a small part of what it takes to run a successful medical practice. There is also the aspect of managing the business side of things when it comes to operating a medical office, or really any business. You may guarantee that you will compensate for all of the services you provide by putting in place medical billing service procedures and then ensuring adherence to those procedures.

 

Medical billing services:

Your medical practices RCM activities start with scheduling the patient appointment and that’s the point from where you need medical billing services. You have an agreement with the patient and continue until the bill will pay in full. It could appear to be a lot at first, but if you break it down into smaller steps. You’ll find that it’s not quite as intimidating. In order to maintain your healthcare practice operational, one of the most important things you can do is ensure that the team with the right experience is on board to provide appropriate medical billing services.

The Processes Involved in Medical Billing Services

Here are a few critical processes that shall include in your medical billing service procedures. Whether you are just getting started with medical billing services or if you are wanting to improve your present system:

  • Make a record of the patient in the EHR/EMR system.
  • Check on the insurance eligibility and benefits verification.
  • Document the details of each visit.
  • Sharing your medical procedure details such as charting the billing team
  • Add appropriate diagnosis and procedure codes
  • Prepare medical claim
  • Examine the claim.
  • Payment and follow-up
  • Prepare the patient statement

Develop a patient registration form:

Develop a patient registration form that compiles all of the essential information that you will require. Such as patient demographics, the patient’s referral provider, insurance identification, and any other necessary details. This data will be utilized during the subsequent visits, and the patient’s medical record will be kept current as circumstances warrant.

Verify the patient’s insurance information and coverage

Verify the patient’s insurance information and coverage before the appointment. And ask to see their insurance card to ensure that you have all of the necessary details. This step is necessary to ensure that there will be no unexpected charges further down the line. During subsequent visits, you will still need to verify that they have the same insurance data that will contain in your medical record and ensures the coverage eligibility with the insurance company.

Coders in the medical industry

Coders in the medical industry will make use of the medical clinical documentation in order to assign the codes. That is most appropriate for the services that will render. It is important to obtain a medical history during the first visit. And then monitor it for any changes during the following visits. The medical transcription will incorporate each and every one of these pieces of information.

Completion of the review of the medical notes, or transcription

Following the completion of the review of the medical notes, or transcription if the provider transcribes and doesn’t use the charting system. It will then prepare for delivery to your medical billers. Some healthcare providers handle the billing and coding on their own. While others contract out the work to a third party like medical billing services. Because of this, you need to make sure that the record of the visit is thorough and describes everything in detail. When this step of the process will complete, the charge entry process will be started to prepare the healthcare claim with the right diagnosis code, procedure code, date of service, and other necessary information to get the claim ready to transmit.

The medical claim will transmit:

Following this, the medical claim will transmit to the insurance companies, worker compensation, auto injury, or employer-funded insurance plans for the purposes of review and processing. Before sending the information to the insurance payers for reimbursement, the healthcare claim has to go through an internal audit generally known as “scrubbing,” during which any problems or errors that may have been applied will check for. Every medical billing company has its own rule-based engine to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the medical claim to avoid rejections. The claim scrubbing process is utilized to check the accuracy of each field in the claim HCFA-1500 Form or UB-04 form which also verifies each individual insurance requirement based on service type and the plan of care.

Review the claim and look for any discrepancies:

If the claim is rejected or denied, it needs to be checked if there are any errors or if the patient underwent any operations that were not covered by their particular insurance policy, if the policy was not active on the date of service, or if there is any incorrection information submitted on the claim. The majority of the time, insurance companies will provide an explanation for a claim that was rejected or denied so that any issues can be resolved.

 

The remaining balance (if any) will engage accounts receivable workflow to submit it to the patient, or financial granter once the claim will be processed or finalized by the insurance company and the final decision about reimbursement has been made. They will first generate a patient statement that explains the remaining balance along with reason or remarks, and then they will submit the invoice to the responsible party whether it is secondary insurance, the patient, or the financial granter of the patient.

Track down any past-due bills:

When the medical claim or bill is paid, this money-making cycle generally called RCM Process is over. Even so, you may require to track down any past-due bills, which is typically the most difficult part of the process for many medical practices that involve the whole denial management strategy. It is essential to take the help of medical billing companies that have experienced teams of medical billers in order to guarantee that you will be paid for the services that you provide. Sometimes heavy medical bills which are sent to patients as patient responsibility need a little more care from the billing team and healthcare provider end to ensure patients get the easy installment options with specific percentage write-offs as a professional courtesy in case they wanted to pay off the whole amount at once. This helps to retain the healthcare office’s clients (Patients) and on a practice level, keeps a steady cash flow.

Well-defined medical billing systems

It is important for your medical office to have a well-defined medical billing system run by an experienced medical billing company in place to assist guarantee that it runs smoothly. That will help to get reimbursed for all of the services that you perform in the healthcare facility. It is possible that getting everything organized will take a little bit of time, but in the long run, it will be well worth the effort.

 

It is simple to lose track of payments or to find oneself dealing with patients whose bills have not been fully paid. You can spare yourself a lot of hassles in the future by having an experienced and well-recognized medical billing company like “iCareBilling LLC” to properly set up your medical billing and collection processes and workflow in place. If you are facing difficulty in getting paid by the insurance company in a timely fashion, you can reach out iCareBilling to schedule a free medical billing consultation to learn more about how the current workflow can be improved. It might be challenging to maintain a steady cash flow by yourself because you have been trained for years to treat patients, not to manage the RCM side of your business. Let the experts handle this task so you can focus on patient care.

Social Media Tips for Medical Practices to Improve Patient Visits

The recent changes in trends of social media and different approaches and their outcomes bring new results on how to improve engagement for companies and individuals. The most recent research approach that was circulated on the internet was from Connecting Healthcare + Social Media Conference in New York where those healthcare professionals who practice their medicine daily and use Social Media platforms as a tool to blog, tell stories and engage their target audience to make sure that they are well connected with them. We should not ignore the importance of social media and why healthcare professionals should take advantage of it. Now healthcare professionals would like to connect with patients through social media platforms for better engagement. The most recent article was published on Business Insider about the insights healthcare professional connecting with patients through YouTube.

 

To be precise, you have to write about what you do, what can bring readers into the exam room, and how were your patient’s overall user experience with your practice, staff, and your overall practice management starts from the initial appointment scheduling to getting their claims paid by the insurance companies. We know it’s a bit more to talk about Medical Billing Services here but that’s a vital part of any medical practice. If you do not have the right Medical Billing Company standing beside you, you can’t have a great patient experience at your Medical Practice. Anyways, let’s go back to the topic and explore what you can do at this point if you are looking to have more patients in your practice and want to use social media and blogging as a tool to make an improvement.

  1. Brand Endorsement.  In general consumer trust, it’s observed that customers generally trust brands rather than non-branded companies who are not popular in their industry. It is really important to build the brand of your business and then maintain a steady consistency to give confidence to your users that you are an established business with a mature workflow designed and you have reached a level where you can innovate and meet the demand of the clients. To change the world’s perspective, you need to focus on your brand and you can start this journey by doing small things regularly and continue to do it to build consistency.

 

  1. Story Telling.  It doesn’t matter what is your specialty, having a social media presence, and even a blog presence, is all about having a voice over the internet. In today’s world, you can use social media to tell stories and engage with your community and make a conversation tool with your targeted audience. No one can tell your story, but you can help your target audience to clarify how and why you have started.

 

  1. Find Target Audience. Healthcare professionals have online communities, and they love to connect, talk about their experiences and share their wealth of knowledge with others. As a doctor, when you have your own community, you can share your experiences and be more interactive and it brings life to your social media fan club, and you can share the amazing experience of how you find out the solutions to your problems.

 

  1. Express Your Opinion. If healthcare professionals discussed patients’ experiences in their blogging and social media in the 2000s, that wouldn’t make such a huge impact as it could make a difference today. But now it can make a huge difference when everything is available online and the community relies on the information available rather than finding the old traditional methods. Along with Social Media Blogging, the new trends are to use YouTube Videos, use the same videos on other social media channels, use podcasts, and use all platforms together to make your business brand more consistent.

 

  1. Discover Your Passion. If you are passionate about something, you would have to find your passion during blogging as it could help to brainstorm and be more creative in ideas generation. From nobody to somebody is a journey we all have to take, and it couldn’t be best than that if you could find it in your medical practice. You can talk about it, and discuss problems, solutions, and your personal experiences and this can strongly encourage your audience to connect.

 

  1. Social Media Marketing. One great advantage of being active on Social Media is to be the person whose opinion matters. But that’s only possible if you have a strong Social Media Marketing Strategy in place. Let’s take the example of Healthcare RCM Companies that constantly strive to improve their brand visibility and keep themselves on top of other Medical Billing Services brands to create a valuable addition to the marketplace. That’s only possible and will get noticed if they would have social media marketing to help them grow their audience. Tweeting only on Twitter alone won’t help unless you do not take it to the next level.

 

6. Share Experience with Medical Billing Companies. Every healthcare professional at some stage found themselves vulnerable in terms of finding the right Medical Billing Company. Finding the best medical billing companies has always been hard as you have to rely on them for your whole revenue and cash flow management. If you discuss the issues you had with your practice management and then could discuss the solution, this can help your other industry fellows to connect and learn from your experiences. You can even share your thoughts and ideas on how you improved the situation in your blogs and share it with your audience in the closed group of healthcare professionals and that can add a lot of value in the marketplace.

8 Ways on How to Collect Deductibles from Patients

Often healthcare providers think about the ways on how to collect deductibles from patients. You must have a proper procedure in place to help you collecting copays and deductibles from patients in an efficient way. Collecting patient deductibles can be challenging when you do not know the insurance annual deductible. In the situation of not having a mechanism to check the eligibility and benefits verification, it often led to a question when should copayments and deductibles be collected from patients?

Medical Billing Companies often put their efforts on healthcare claims insurance collections, but they do not have a mechanism to actively follow up on patient collection. This creates an important need for good practice management software comes in that has certain features to not only support Medical Billing tasks but also could focus on collecting the balances from patients. Having the best medical billing company by your side helps you to improve healthcare practices workflow and align your medical billing and collection process to maximize cash flow and improve collection.

1. Inform Patients about their Deductible at the Beginning of the Year

It’s important for the healthcare practice staff members to have knowledge that when the new year start, there would be higher chances that the patient insurance plan’s deductible has not been met. Annual deductible plans are being renewed at the start of the new year so the staff member should share this information with patients who are not up to date with insurance policies. This will help patients to know their financial responsibility in advance rather than getting bills for deductible and getting surprised about that. Early access to information helps them to plan ahead on how to pay the deductible.

2. Verify Patient Plan Benefits Before Date of Service

Medical Billing Software allows you to check the patient benefits online to verify the plan benefits, total deductible, how much deductible has been met or paid by the patient, and remaining amount as well as out of pocket maximum. These details help you to inform patients about their coverage benefits so they know that they have to pay upfront or make a commitment to pay later but one way or other, the patient would have to pay the cost. This helps them to get mentally ready and manage their finances effectively.

3. Inform Patients about their Estimated Upfront Medical Bill Cost

Helping your patient to calculate the estimated cost of medical illness and the cost they could end up paying after their healthcare claim is processed by the insurance company would help you in collecting copay and deductibles from patients. Collecting deductibles from patients is more like having a transparent and genuine conversation with clients about their financial responsibility.

4. Collect Deductibles from Patient at the Date of Service

If you ask, when should copayments and deductibles be collected from the patient? the right answer should be at the time of service. Collecting patient deductibles at the front desk when the patient visits your office help you to save time, improve the cash flow of your practice and reduce the cost of patient statement mailing cost or e-statement cost or further medical practice overhead cost such as engaging your practice staff member to call patients for the follow-up. This would also help you to improve your overall medical billing and collection process to get increased revenue.

5. Make Healthcare Deductible SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for Collections

Making a policy for not only the deductible but for other patient responsibilities such as copayment, coinsurance, non-covered services under the patient’s plan, and tapping on the out-of-pocket maximum helps you to be more organized. Healthcare practices that have the standard procedure and having that shared with patients through the website or other media help your patient go on a procedure to make regular payment without any delay and making any excuses.

6. Offer Convenience of Payment

In an effort of collecting copays and deductibles from patients, you must offer the most convenient way to the patients so they can find it easy to make a payment. If patients find it difficult to make payment through regular checks mailing out, it would be hard for them to spare some time for this task. Your healthcare practice should have payment integration with leading payment gateways and offer multiple ways to make a payment.

7. Provide Flexible Patient Payment Plans

When thinking about the ways of collecting deductibles from patients, you must think like a patient. Some patients cannot pay the whole amount at once and they need a flexible payment plan to make all the payments. Your healthcare practice should have a policy on how to collect deductible from patient and offer your patients more flexibility so they can find it easy and not a financial burden on their paychecks.

8. Educate Patients about Healthcare & Medical Bills and their Responsibilities.

Use your newsletter and blog post to share insight about when should copayments and deductibles be collected from patients by the healthcare offices. When your patient will have more relevant information about the process, their patient plan, your practice SOPs about collecting patient deductibles they will be more responsive, and you will get your patient payments more frequently.

Looking for Best Medical Billing Companies?

If you need Best Medical Billing Services for your healthcare practice, Contact Us today and talk to a Medical Billing Specialist about your needs. We can help you to find an innovative way to choose the Best Medical Billing Solution for your practice to thrive in your business career.

6 Ways to Improve Patient Payment Collections

Working to improve patient payment collections is equally important as increasing insurance collections by having a mindful team of Expert Medical Billers on your side. Improving patient collections at healthcare practices has a significant impact on practice profitability. However, some physicians ignore the fact that they must realign their office workflow to achieve maximum payment collections from insurances and patients. In Medical Billing and Collections Process patient payment collection is the first step to start working with office workflow. It starts from scheduling a patient appointment, identifies their co-pay, co-insurance, and out-of-pocket maximum, and collect the payment upfront.

Some practices have different goals in terms of achieving the highest revenue and it differs from practices to specialties as well as the vision of the healthcare practice owner. Here are the key points to make which can help you to be more successful and profitable in your healthcare practice business.

Insurance Benefits Verification at the Time of Appointment

As soon as the patient calls to schedule the appointment, you should have the ability to check the patient’s eligibility and have this in the documentation. You must know the patient’s plan limitations, copay, coinsurance, deductible, out-of-pocket maximum, and in case of a specialist, the specialist copay as well.

Taking Patient Payment at Front-Desk

Most Practice Management Software can allow healthcare provider staff to check patient eligibility on run-time. If you do not use the industry-standardized Healthcare Practice Management System, you can look at the patient’s insurance card to get the information about copay, coinsurance, deductible, and other plan level details along with eligibility effective and termination date.

Offering the Different Payment Processing Solutions

When we talk about payment processing, we think everyone would be comfortable with Credit Card but that is not true. Some patients prefer to go by Credit Card or Debit Card and in some cases, they would like to use the paper check. Even in some cases, they directly want to go on a patient payment plan to pay in the installments. You need to ensure that your Practice Management System and overall Healthcare Management Workflow have the ability to accept different payment sources.

Improved Patient Payment Collection Procedure

Having a well-defined patient payment collection procedure in place helps you in improving patient collections, and to avoid unnecessary follow-ups, sending too early or too late statements, or relying on manual follow-up. That is the reason that in healthcare business process automation is becoming the booming business market. Your Medical Billing Services Provider should have the ability to send frequent paper statements, e-statements, reminder text messages, and automated IVR Calls for the balance due to ensure the maximum collection.

Review Patient Payment A/R Reports

To work on improving patient collections ou must generate systematic reports to look at the pending account receivable reports on patients’ end and see how long they have been pending. Have a Top Ranked Medical Billing Company by your side to help you provide dynamic reports. It will help you to view the different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to make further decisions about outstanding balances.

Patient Payment Final Settlement:

As a healthcare provider, you can offer your patients a lump sum amount as a final settlement for their all due balances to clear the pending bills. This strategy helps the healthcare providers to improve patient collections from the bad debt instead of writing this off completely. You need to consider this option before writing off the patient old outstanding balances.

Hire a Professional Medical Billing Company

We deeply understand that healthcare providers are trained for years to provide the best care to their patients and they should not be engaged in the medical billing and collections process to ruin their potential. You should look for a Top Rated Medical Billing Company that can help you to improve your payment collection.

Medical Billing Services Help Available

We at iCareBilling helping many healthcare providers to improve their overall collections. We help the healthcare practices to improve their current workflow to achieve the highest insurance & patient payment collection. Contact us today and talk to Medical Billing Specialist to help you find a Medical Billing Solution for your practice.