By Leo John
Being a healthcare provider, you should know how an expert medical coding team from a recognized billing company can reduce your time in Accounts Receivable. Managing Accounts Receivable efficiently is essential to maintaining cash flow and the financial stability of your healthcare business. However, with a proficient medical coding team, you can receive timely and accurate reimbursements from insurance companies and patients.
This blog can help you understand the concepts of Accounts Receivable and the medical coders’ contribution to minimizing its time.
What is an Accounts Receivable?
Accounts Receivable refers to the outstanding payback amount that falls on the patient or the insurance company, which they should give the healthcare provider for their treatments and services rendered.
It is the core principle of healthcare providers to get back their Accounts Receivable amount as soon as possible. Delay in the process may increase the probability of a healthcare provider never getting it back.
Why is Optimizing Accounts Receivable Important?
Accounts Receivable Management plays a vital role in any business, including healthcare. Collecting the invoices can directly impact the overall cash flow of your business. Optimizing Accounts Receivable can help you improve efficiency and productivity and increase profits. Optimization can also help you maintain better relationships with your patients, so you do not need to send follow-up reminders.
How Can You Improve Your Accounts Receivable Process?
Here are a few tips to improve the Accounts Receivable process:
- Streamline Insurance Verification
Unverified patients are a notable threat to your Accounts Receivable process. So, verifying insurance before treating or serving a patient is important. - Collect Upfront Payment
Collecting the payment at the time of service without postponing it can improve your Accounts Receivable Management. - Track A/R Regularly.
Keeping track of your Accounts Receivable and following up is crucial to maintaining the cash flow of your healthcare business. - Choose an Expert Medical Coding Team.
Choosing an expert medical coding team that consists of coders who have inexplicit knowledge of the latest codes is essential to reducing mistakes, rejections, and denials, which helps you spend less time in A/R. - Lean on Experts Like MHRCM.
When you are on the edge of the roof of Accounts Receivable, reach out to an expert Revenue Cycle Management team to manage it. Our MHRCM is here to help you in times of need. We are just a call away.
Accounts Receivable Bad Debts
Accounts Receivable that are no longer given by customers due to their inability to fulfill financial commitments are known as Bad Debts. A business can suffer a huge amount of loss due to bad debts, and so it is advised to collect the cost of the service at the very moment to avoid bad debts and financial losses.
There Are Two Methods to Recognize Bad Debts and They Are:
Direct Write-off Method
Once you identify that a customer’s invoice will remain unpaid, you can charge it directly to bad debt expenses and remove it from the account of Accounts Receivable. To simplify, the bad debt account will be debited, while the Accounts Receivable account will be credited with the unpaid amount.
Allowance Method
In this method, bad debts are guessed even before they occur. Once the accounting team finds a threat in the payment of a customer, they will soon change the amount from Accounts Receivable to allowance for doubtful accounts.
Administrative Expenses
Healthcare providers often spend a lot of money collecting unpaid cash from customers. They will use many methods, from sending follow-up letters to hiring an additional employee to collect the money. If the invoice continues to be unpaid even after implementing all these processes, that is when the company decides to hand it over to the collection agency, which demands even more. This will only lead to administrative losses. However, administrative costs can be easily reduced when compared with other expenses.
How To Reduce Accounts Receivable Expenses?
Reduce your Accounts Receivable expenses by adjusting your processes with payment collectors. You can utilize automation software to automate invoice delivery, reminder emails, call scheduling, and other tedious tasks so your payment collectors can keep up with different activities.
Lastly, you can get away from these Accounts Receivable expenses if you have an expert medical coding team with skilled coders.
How Can Skilled Medical Coders Reduce Your Time In Accounts Receivable?
Accounts Receivable time can be effectively reduced by a skilled medical coder or coding team, as they can apply precise and accurate code without any error for every healthcare service. On the other hand, these accurate medical codes can minimize claim rejections and denials, resulting in faster payment from patients or insurance companies.
A medical coding team with knowledge of the most advanced and latest coding standards and regulations helps healthcare providers avoid errors that can cause delays in their Accounts Receivable process.
The Advantages of Choosing Skilled Medical Coders or Coding Teams Are as Follows:
- Timely claim submission
- Thorough documentation
- Effective denial management
- Prompt re-submission
- Proactive monitoring and reporting
- Quick resolution of discrepancies
The Responsibility of Medical Coders in Accounts Receivable Management
Medical coders are also doing the job of translators, as they spend much time translating your healthcare services, procedures, diagnoses, and equipment with their accurate codes. Their accurate codes enable you to receive payment for your services without delay. The level of precision and coherence of your medical coders can impact the speed and success of your claim processing.
Accurate Coding
As mentioned above, the core duty of medical coders is to translate your healthcare services, procedures, diagnoses, and equipment into accurate and precise medical codes. Their level of accuracy and efficiency in the code application determines the payment of the healthcare providers. Choosing medical coders who are naturally well-versed in the latest coding standards decides your Accounts Receivable Management’s status.
Compliance with Regulations
There are a huge set of regulations and guidelines for healthcare billing and coding. Medical coders from recognized billing companies are trained to stay up-to-date with these regulations. The knowledge of trained medical coders can ensure that claims are submitted correctly and legally, which minimizes delays and complications in the Accounts Receivable process.
Efficient Denial Management
Though your coding team puts utmost effort into avoiding claim denials, there can be some claims that go out of your hands and get denied, and so efficient denial management is essential in resolving these denials. In this process, the medical coders play a remarkable role as they help healthcare providers to identify the reasons for the denials, correct the coding errors, and resubmit the claims.
Improved Documentation Practices
Medical coders team up with healthcare providers to ensure that the documentation supports the code assigned. This cooperation and collaboration between them result in producing precise billing. It can also lead to fewer mismatches and a faster claim process, which reduces the time accounts remain in receivable status.
Proactive Monitoring and Reporting
Medical billing involves following up on submitted claims. Payment of receivables can be accelerated by reducing the time between submission and payment. Regular monitoring and reporting aids the healthcare providers stay on top of their Accounts Receivable.
MHRCM Is What You Are Searching For!
Outsource your Accounts Receivable Management to MHRCM. Our team will help you to file and receive your claims on time.
Our Account Receivable Management team follows a simple yet effective process, which is:
- Registration with insurance validation
- Timely submission
- Claim follow-up
On the other hand, our medical billing and coding team can offer you the following benefits without doubt:
- Reduced error risk
- Enhanced capability
- Quicker payments
- Active compliance
- Escape from hectic administrative tasks
We would like to conclude the blog by capturing your attention. All the healthcare providers out there, what is stopping you from reaching out to us? We have everything you have been eagerly waiting for.
MHRCM is here, patiently waiting to serve people who passionately serve their patients.
MHRCM is here, patiently waiting to serve people who passionately serve their patients.
Related Resource
About the Author
