Healthcare organizations are not out of the woods yet, and many are experiencing bad cash flows.
As numerous studies pointed out, the operational margins are declining, while the patient volume is increasing along with the severe shortage of employees.
Worse still, extended AR buckets are exerting even more pressure on the healthcare businesses. Of course, increasing the outstanding accounts receivable collection is crucial to having a
financially stable practice.
In this guide, we will discuss why it is important for healthcare providers to manage accounts receivable and provide insights to help reduce aged AR buckets across hospital systems.
What Makes Healthcare Accounts Receivable Services Essential?
The accounts receivable does not include these outstanding balances, which may take longer to be collected often with extra efforts or debts to recover them. Efficient AR management is the
backbone of a strong revenue cycle, ensuring:
Streamlined cash flow: Working capital is important for offsetting the general running expenses and emoluments to employees.
Reduced operational costs: Effective AR management drives out write-offs that are so expensive.
Maximized reimbursements: The longer the money cannot be collected, the higher the chance of customers falling back on their payment
and not being able to pay their debt.
That is why we see the impact of AR accumulating and affecting your practice’s revenue and financial stability. Lack of adequate cash flow may sometimes dangerously affect the daily running of
businesses, and at other times lead to loss of revenue due to uncollected amounts.
Tips to Scale Down Outstanding Healthcare Accounts Receivable Buckets
While keeping an eye on the portion of accounts that have been outstanding for some time sounds quite straightforward, trying to tackle this issue can become problematic for staff who are already
multi-tasking between administrative and clinical roles.
Here’s how to take control of your AR effectively:
1. Submit accurate claims
Reducing the time for getting the claims right is very key. It’s costly to make wrong claims; small practicing units cost up to $25 per each claim that is denied, and large organizations cost up
to $117. It is logical to submit documents and information completely and correctly due to which payment is made faster, and patients trust the system.
2. Ensure correct charge entry
Another for patient accounting coordination is timely charge entry after a visit by the patient. As it lays great emphasis on quality and efficiency of services, providers have to be very careful
while coding these services so as to be aware of the problem of underpayments or audit penalties.
3. Use strong denial management mechanism
Challenges which may lead to claim denial are inevitable but can be controlled. Failure to understand or identify these denial patterns, or failure to determine why they are emerging in the first
place, is a major contributor to revenue leakage. An active denial management system reduces reappearance of similar occurrences and optimizes subsequent claims.
4. Maintain regular follow-ups
Persistent tracking and monitoring of AR facilitates timely identification of areas where revenue may be lost. To control the problem of bad debts, you can regularly track the AR trends and look
through the aged debt, as well as analyze the collection figures.
5. Maximizing obtaining payments from patients
Prolonged handling of patient accounts or collecting the patients’ balances is typically among the most demanding issues in healthcare accounts receivable services management. Any practice not collecting first balances up front
co-pays will experience their reimbursements cut by 20%. The extensive financial loss results from a lack of proper patient payment process, hence, the need for a clear, streamlined payment
process.
Wrapping Up
Managing an excellent healthcare accounts receivable services is not necessarily the albatross around your practice’s neck that it once was. Thus, with the help of the critical compliance areas
that include accurate claims, proper charge entry, management of denials, follow-ups, and sound patent payments, the improvement of your practice’s revenue cycle and its profitability is
guaranteed.
If you are under pressure, you may need to outsource your healthcare accounts receivable services to a reliable contractor. When implemented correctly such tools will help you
to minimize aged AR, boost cash flow and concentrate on providing excellent patient care.