If you run or own a medical office that sees patients, then you know the bottlenecks that can come with trying to get paid quickly and for the amount that you charge. Here are a few tips to help you improve your payment solutions at your practice so you can increase cash flow in order to keep your bottom line more healthy.
Automation
The medical world is complex as every itemized service has to be converted to a medical code that the insurance companies can understand. If these codes are typed in wrong, it can lead to huge headaches with delayed insurance and customer payments, not to mention upset customers and insurance company representatives. When anything is delayed, it disrupts cash flow, which can be very problematic when bills and other expenses come up. In order to help reduce some of the pain that can be caused by this, investing in automation software is very important.
Automation software can be customized to automate code entry as well as charge review to make sure that amounts are correct before they go out to customers and insurance companies as bills. Some solutions can even automate the sending out and processing of bills and payments to customers, which are shown to help increase the likelihood of being paid on time and thus improving cash flow as a whole.
Not only can automation help with billing and payments, but it can help with scheduling as well as daily itineraries in order to get much more done with less. Minimizing the staff can save you on salary and tax expenses while being able to still provide excellent care and services to your patients.
Accuracy
Most chargemasters can be aided through the use of software to ensure accuracy. Accuracy is where most bottlenecks happen around practices all over the country as the amount of effort to fix a mistake can take days or even weeks with insurance companies and patients. Taking the extra time and having the appropriate steps to be accurate in the first place are well worth the time, money and effort as it can reduce future headaches and problems entirely. Making sure you have adequately trained staff in order to ensure accuracy is one area where most practices fail, so make sure to not skip over this very important step.
As you can see, automation and accuracy can go a long way in helping you to improve cash flow at your practice.