Optimizing reimbursement and boosting revenue should be one of every practice’s top priorities, as reimbursements are needed to keep the practice financially afloat. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that an account 60 days past due has a 70% chance of recovery. After six months, it has only a 30% probability of being paid.
The big question is, how do you optimize reimbursement? The stats show that the more a practice delays in recovering account receivables, the lower their chances of recovery. If reimbursements are optimized, bad debts, denials, and accounts receivable can be curtailed.
To help organizations looking to solve this problem, we decided to create a blog post as a guide for optimizing reimbursement and boosting revenue. Here are five ways a practice can optimize reimbursement and boost revenues:
- Embrace technology
Optimizing reimbursement and boosting revenue in modern healthcare is proportional to the technology you have in place. Technology is making the tedious process of chasing bad debts and claims easier.
Most practices that are rightly handling their reimbursement are doing so with the right technology — revenue cycle management. Choosing an efficient revenue cycle management software is a game-changer.
By using the right revenue cycle management, you’ll get quicker reimbursements than when you use a manual process to chase debts. Another upside of revenue cycle management is the accuracy and efficiency of the system. It is programmed to not only simplify workflow but to promptly provide correct information.
- Educate patients
Providing patients with the correct information is crucial to boosting revenue. Patients primarily act based on the information they have. If you want a swift positive response from patients, keep them updated. Educating patients eliminates bad debt and speeds up payment, boosting your revenue. Technology is also assisting with this through an automated eligibility verification. When using a revenue cycle management system, your patients’ eligibility is automated. It will provide you with accurate information on your patients’ insurance eligibility and financial situation. You get to know who’s eligible for what and who isn’t.
- Use data analytics to measure KPIs
Measuring your KPIs through data analytics ensures that your revenue cycle management is transparent. Your key performance indicators should boil down to reimbursement optimization and increase in revenue. By studying your dashboard, you get enough insights on what to improve on to make patients pay up. Additionally, your recovery team knows what to focus on and what needs their immediate prioritization.
- Outsource reimbursement optimization to vendors
External help could be the solution to optimizing your reimbursement as a practice. Outsourcing means that you’ll be able to collect more payments due to the trained billing experts you’ll be working with. Vendors have proven to have higher recovery rates compared to when they chase these payments themselves. That’s not all. Your organization can quickly trace and follow up on denials. Due to their professionalism, your claims become clear, increasing their chances of being resolved. If you’re thinking of outsourcing your revenue cycle management, go for it. Importantly, you’ll have the time to focus on other aspects of your practice. It takes a significant burden off your shoulders.
- Target promptly paying patients
Focusing on patients who have a history of settling their debts on time makes prospecting easy for you. Because if you keep targeting patients who find it hard to pay, you keep having the same problem. Therefore, the best approach is to concentrate on prompt payers — patients who you’ve qualified as good payers. With these systems and processes in place, you improve your potential to recover your money, increasing revenue.