Western Pennsylvania Healthcare News

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How to Improve Your Patient Collections

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privatepracticefinanceswebBy Alex Tate

Medical practices need to be very careful about their billing. A relatively weak billing department not only impacts revenues but also leads to patients who are not satisfied with the service, which ultimately affects your practice’s reputation. Hence the business end of the practice should be a top priority for any practicing doctor.

We at CureMD realize that doctors are not accountants. Thus, this article has no billing jargon or complicated algorithms for improving revenue cycle management. Just remember—not to concentrate all your energies in collecting from insurances. Maximizing patient collections should be a priority.

Around 30-32% of a small practice’s revenue comes through patient collections a recent study by MGMA indicated. Furthermore, with more professional organizations purchasing high deductible and lower premium insurance plans, the burden to pay is shifting towards the patient.

Unfortunately, the difficulty arises in collecting from patients, and hence most of it remains unpaid. Many experts have suggested that practices might be losing a huge amount of money by simply not following up on patient collections. The following tips which are easy to implement will go a long way in helping you collect from patients. Try them and share your feedback with us. [Read more…]

University Orthopedics Center’s Recipe for Revenue and Collection Success

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By Joseph Myers

HospitalsMoney

Revenue cycle management (RCM) is one of the most critical processes for a healthcare organization. Because the revenue cycle directly affects cash flow, it is often considered the lifeblood of a business.

For RCM to be successful, highly trained and experienced staff are essential. Staff must be very knowledgeable of the ins and outs of billing and stay current on rapidly changing state and federal government regulations. Proactively managing every item is a difficult and time-consuming challenge that requires much diligence. Without adequate staff in place, the process quickly can become overwhelming. This is often the case for healthcare organizations that rely on internal staff to manage RCM processes. Inconsistencies with internal billing staff and limited knowledge is a common problem for many ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and a primary cause of RCM disruptions. This was a challenge faced by the University Orthopedics Center (UOC).

For years, UOC’s ASC relied on an internal team to manage billing. A two-year phase of staffing inconsistencies resulted in revenue peaks and valleys from month to month. The center was under-achieving on many benchmarks it used to evaluate department performance including days to bill (DTB), days in accounts receivable (AR), and net collections. It was clear; something had to change. [Read more…]

When Should You Eliminate a Provider from a Referral Network?

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privatepracticefinanceswebDeveloping and maintaining a strong physician referral network can lead to more patients and more revenue for your medical practice. Your practice could spend months, maybe even years, getting a solid referral structure in place. But what happens when some of those relationships start to sour?  When should you eliminate a weak referral from your network, and is there anything your practice can do to salvage that relationship? Below are the four factors that could signify that it’s time to start thinking about eliminating a provider.

Poor communications

The key to maintaining strong relationships over time is always timely communication.

“Written communication to the referring physician demonstrates strong organizational processes and good clinical care,” says Lisa Weber, outreach and referral relations director for La Rabida Children’s Hospital in Chicago, IL. “Picking up the phone—spoken communication—is also a way to strengthen the relationship with referring physicians.”

La Rabida’s pediatric practice provides primary and specialty care for medically underserved and low-incidence populations. Having a strong referral network from area pediatricians, social service agencies, FQHCs and word-of-mouth enables the practice to reach and serve these special populations that may have otherwise gone unserved. [Read more…]

Revenue Reality Check: Evaluating Where Your Money Comes From

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revenue cycle, medical billing, revenue cycle management, Healthcare Billing & Management, generating revenue,This is the first of a four-part series on the revenue cycle. Our next installment will help you identify holes in your billing cycle and where revenues often leak.  In the third article of the series, we will discuss how to tune up your revenue cycle—how to identify the biggest issues in your revenue cycle and some insight on how to benchmark your revenue cycle against the competition. Our final article will discuss how to improve payer performance and better manage and monitor your contracts with payors. 

Physicians are always challenged to find ways to generate revenue from their medical practice.  Nearly every function in your hospital or practice can generate revenue, yet many are leaving money on the table. Smaller practices, in particular, do not have sophisticated practice management systems to help them see the big financial picture or not using a billing partner to assist them in collecting money.

“One way practices can be proactive in determining solutions that make sense to their specific need and their speciality is to look for a partner, such as billing company, that can focus on some of the challenges they are faced with so they can do what they do best—diagnose and treat patients,” says Jackie Willett, president of the Healthcare Billing & Management Association (HBMA) and senior vice president for Intermix. “The billing partners could help maximize reimbursements as well as ensure compliance in regard to coding and billing regulations.”

Before you begin to worry about how to collect money, you first need to understand how to make money off your practice and where in your practice can you derive revenue.
[Read more…]