Manual Claim Checks - What’s at Stake for your Organization?

Does your practice manually contact payers to check your claim status? Are you aware that doing so costs roughly $7 per attempt? Your revenue cycle management processes are vital to the financial health and wellness of your practice. Poorly managed handling of claim status inquires costs you not only money but precious time. A few eye-opening facts provided by the 2018 CAQH (Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare) index emphasize the importance of efficiency when it comes to your revenue cycle billing habits:

• In 2018 alone, providers made 173 million manual claim status inquiries. At approximately $7 per attempt that’s a lot of revenue down the drain.
• On average, it takes approximately 14 minutes to check claim status. Who has time for that? Not only that, but most payers put limitations on the number of inquiries per call, meaning your billing department has to make more calls, costing more time and money.
• Quality of information found on portals is often unreliable, especially when not updated in a timely manner.
• During the past few years, more than 20 million new patients have been logged into the American healthcare system. That’s a lot of data.

Is your practice reaping the benefits of a healthy RCM process or are you losing out because of inefficient claims submission practices? Precision Medical Billing improves RCM processes Healthy revenue cycle management relies on expertise and value provided by professionals with expertise navigating claim management practices. Two major challenges hamper efficient claims status inquiries practices:

• Providers with reduced payer reimbursements and increasingly strained resources on a daily basis are taking the DIY approach.
• Limited staff prevents timely follow-up on unpaid claims, increasing accounts receivable (AR) days.

Medical staff still utilizing manual claim status processes take a huge chunk out of work hours. Due to high workloads, inexperienced billing practices, and poor follow-ups on claims, reimbursements slow down. Improperly trained staff miss opportunities to prevent denials through timely return of additional requested documentation for pending claims. Lack of attention or time adds costly AR days to your revenue cycle. Inexperience can lead to missing high-yield accounts and inaccurate or poor prioritization of accounts. Don’t let claims status inquiries dig into your revenue or waste hours of time that could be spent taking care of patients and ensuring that you, the physician, get paid for your services in a timely manner. Precision Medical Billing stays on top of your RCM with efficient claim management, proactive processes that prevent denials and tracking claims to reduce AR days. For more information on how Precision Medical Billing can improve your RCM, give us a call today.