7 Strategies to Improve Medical Billing in Your Practice

Medical billing can be thought of as numbers and codes; paperwork and forms.  But correct medical billing can prevent monetary issues for families, and difficult  accounting issues for medical practices.  Both sides benefit by feeling successful ; the patient feels they are just not a bill to their physician, and physicians know they can keep giving successful care.  But what are some of these best medical practices to make this work?

1. Make sure that your medical billers check first and see what is covered on each patient’s insurance and what is not. This saves time down the road. Verify with insurance providers what procedures are covered.
2. Understand the coverage that is offered to each patient. Read the small print. Read everything that is involved with each patient; some plans are very similar but will leave out key pieces that others cover.
3. Have a great administrative assistant. Those medical offices fortunate with a  great organizer at the front of the office can take care of a lot of pain up front by collecting payments and copying insurance cards. Just being consistent across the board when dealing with patients can reduce problems with end of month cash flow.
4. Double-check! Make sure to double-check your claims after coding them. One of the biggest problems in medical billing is simple human error.  Double-checking information saves time in the end (and at the end of the month crunch time when money needs to be coming in the door).
5. Use a contract service for claim scrubbing. Companies like Clinic Service can offer great outsourcing of medical billing skills plus recommend sophisticated software that ensures errors are caught before they are sent to an insurance company.
6. Review your revenue cycle. Take a close look at how long your revenue cycle is taking; electronic claim filing should speed this process up and also reduce costly errors dramatically.
7. Be sure to follow up! See what is taking insurance providers, especially Medicaid and Medicare, from paying you.

Clinic Service offers all of these services for successful medical claim management.  We don’t just double-check claims, we triple-check.  We follow up on every claim, review revenue cycles with you and work closely with your office staff for success.  We train your administrative staff for best practices in dealing with all types of cash/insurance situations, and work extra hard at making sure your billing cycle is a success.