Tips To Improve Account Receivable In Your Medical Practice

Are you thinking that high accounts receivable are affecting the cash flow of your practice? If so, then you are not the only one- many practices go through revenue postponement for the same reason. 

What is A/R in Medical Billing?

When your practice bills an insurance company or patient for services, the cash they are indebted is known as accounts receivable (A/R). Normally, practices calculate A/R like “days in A/R”, which is considered by dividing the overall A/R amount by the average daily charges of hospital revenue cycle management. If your practice in A/R is 30 days, then you won’t get paid for 30 days of work.

A/R in healthcare accounts receivable management is categorised by age, i.e. time period from the insurance company or patient was billed. Good practice ensures an increase in cash flow, which includes the highest ratio of A/R in the main bucket and a lessening amount in every following bucket.

Top Tips To Improve Cash Flow And A/R 

A high A/R prevents cash flow and, thus, your exercise from working. Here are the top 7 tips you can follow to improve your A/R:

1. Run A/R Reports

Monitor A/R fluctuations and trends by running A/R reports each month. These reports ought to incorporate matured receivables so you can track growth with past bills. Run these reports from the administration date rather than the billing date to recognise billing timetable issues.

2. Follow-up with Exceptional Accounts

Patients with remarkable balances ought to be sent notices incessantly. If they keep on dismissing these updates, have your office follow up through phone calls. Phone calls are harder to overlook than letters. If your patient is not paying attention to both...you may need to use the more effective tools of a debt enforcement organisation.

3. Increase Billing Cycles

Medical practices frequently mail bills once per month, which affects income. Have a go at mailing insurance invoices twice a week and patient invoices once a week. The quicker a bill reaches the correct beneficiary, the sooner it tends to be paid.

4. Examine Claims Closely

Staff should come together and look at the cases for a complete and accurate result. Before submitting claims, edit your entries. Most programming projects and clearinghouses have "claim to scrub" devices to get simple coding and clerical errors. Ensure your billing staff is inspecting these basic issues!

5. Check Insurance

Before another patient arrives, confirm they are qualified to get the treatment with their health insurance. After you have verified qualification, calculate the amount they will owe dependent on their deductibles and co-pays. Inform them before the appointment, so they comprehend what to expect.

6. Examine Write-offs

Work on looking into every potential discount before you send it through. Figure out which circumstances - by a medical procedure, amount, and so on - require support. Make a point to deplete all elective instalment choices before discounting an unpaid balance.

7. Collect Payment in Office

Ensure every patient pays their co-pay before leaving the organisation. This will decrease bad debt and reduce matured receivables. It is important that your staff present a report of co-pays gathered with the goal that you can recognise wrong payments quickly.