Your healthcare business may be good at providing quality services and patient care, but it isn’t enough to make sure all your bills are paid. You are proving a social service, but you also need to turn a profit in order to stay in business. It is important to pay attention to your financials and carefully monitor your revenue streams. Here are some revenue cycle management steps (RCM) that you can take to ensure your healthcare agency is able to keep serving the community.
Determine Your Processing Systems
The size of your organization influences the type of software or processing system that you use. If your organization is small but has a strong IT team, but you can use an RCM software that is hosted through your own servers or through the cloud. Larger organizations that have a lot of moving parts are better off using a third party that handles RCM services. This allows your employees to keep their focus on patient treatment, rather than getting bogged down in paperwork.
Obtain Patient Pre-Authorization
To stay on track of payment for services, you should always strive to obtain pre-authorization for patient services. In cases of a medical emergency, pre-authorization isn’t a priority. Getting the authorization for a procedure or medication isn’t a guarantee that the insurer is going to cover the cost, but it can help eliminate many of the risks of non-payment. Checking for eligibility and verifying benefits can also help weed out potential non-payments from insurance companies, but it can be a time-consuming process to conduct these tasks over the phone. You can use medical office software to help automate the process and provide more efficiency with reporting.
Properly Submit Healthcare Claims
Your income won’t come until your office has submitted the claims for services performed or patients receive their bills. A practice management software is vital to making sure you have the most efficient method of submitting and tracking claims. A software system is able to submit claims automatically, send them in batches, and even detect and identify mistakes.
Post Payments
With RCM software, healthcare billing statements can be automatically generated and posted. Patients can receive emails with an embedded payment option to encourage more prompt payment responses. This makes payment quick and convenient.
By automating these systems, you can accelerate the revenue stream into your business and have a better understanding of the financial situation. An RCM system can be a complicated process without the right tools in place to streamline operations and efficiency.
