How Hospitals Can Improve Their Billing and Collections Processes
It’s not uncommon for hospitals to grapple with account resolution problems, and revenue cycle management is an ongoing challenge for even the best-run hospitals.
In 2018, many hospitals are struggling to collect payments from not only patients, but insurance companies too. It can be argued that this is getting increasingly more difficult because patients now have more flexibility regarding how they pay their medical bills.
Insurance companies are requiring more documents than ever before, which is contributing to more medical billing errors. Since medical billing is an extensive process, mistakes are extremely common these days.
Good revenue cycle management depends upon strong communication.
Here are the five ways to make the most of your hospital’s collections/billing processes to reduce your total number of denied claims.
1. Change The Way You Follow Up With Patients
How are you currently reaching out to patients to collects debts? Are you doing it on a monthly basis? If you want to improve your cash flow, you may need to switch and do your follow-ups on a weekly basis instead. You don’t want to harass your patients; however, the frequent and constant communications affords them to at least to consider to negotiate a payment plan or at the very least, pay their bill. You should only make these calls weekdays during normal business hours.
2. Establish Your Collections Process
A great way for hospitals to improve their collection’s process is to request/require payment from patients at the time of their service. By collecting as much debt as possible upfront, you helping to speed up the entire process. Other steps that can be taken include checking to see which services patients are eligible for before their appointment and notifying patients in advance when any co-payments are due.
3. Have Multiple Payment Plan Options
There are many instances where a patient is unable to pay a medical bill upfront completely. For this reason, payment plans are a great way to help patients who need help to pay off larger bills. This will take a lot of the burden and stress off of patients and will still allow you to collect payments over time. Consider having a few payment plans for your patients to choose from.
4. Create an Insurance Authorization Checklist
The more that can be done to ensure patient eligibility and proper pre-authorization up front, the more likely the billing and collections cycle is to stay on track until the patient is discharged and his or her account is paid. Provide your admissions personnel with a patient insurance authorization checklist to use when registering patients. Understanding eligibility up front benefits the hospital and the patient, who can be apprised of what his or her out-of-pocket responsibilities are estimated to be.
5. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Patient Education
Patients understand that they may receive large bills, and when your hospital helps them know what to expect at every stage of the process, patients can become allies in making sure all bills are settled properly. Patient education should help them understand their financial responsibilities concerning their account balance, and their options for resolving it. Counseling low income patients on possible coverage by third parties like Medicaid should take place before admission, if possible, as should installment payment options.
Conclusion
Streamlining medical billing and collections for hospitals ultimately rests upon strong communication: with personnel so they understand their responsibilities, with patients so they understand what billing statements mean and what payment options are, and with insurers to keep rejected and denied claims to a minimum.
At WWS, we work with hospitals on every aspect of revenue cycle management, to streamline billing and maximize revenues.
If you would like to know more, please call us at +1(302) 613-1356. We would be more than happy to answer your questions about hospital revenue cycle management and let our team assist you in choosing the right solution.
