Small Description Of Revenue Cycle Management
Delivering the best medical service is not only about earning money. Running a reputable and successful medical practice involves, first and foremost, the care for your patients. As a result, top healthcare service is in high demand. Also, take into consideration your patients’ whole office visit experience.
The greeting at the door is as important as an accurate and efficient billing process billing process. Proper revenue cycle management is essential to your medical practice’s success. Plus, its clarity will help your method lower unnecessary admin costs.
Revenue cycle management is the process used by healthcare providers to charge accurately and on time to receive all payments from insurance companies. The process starts with the contact or encounter between the patient with the health system and ends when the last payment has been paid.
Because of the complexity of the revenue cycle management process and the regulatory oversight, healthcare providers are expected to turn their revenue cycle management services to third companies to handle this complex process with specialized agents and proprietary technologies to manage healthcare provider revenue cycles. For a list of the top revenue cycle management companies, click here.
Compliance with medical coding regulations is an essential aspect of revenue cycle management. When optimal coding compliance occurs, higher revenues and decreased claim denials from insurance companies arise. Also, a medical practice can avoid regulatory penalties.
Contents
Steps from the Revenue Cycle Management are
Registration: The patient provides all the information required to fill out the insurance company bill (per the ANSI 837 5010 standards and requirements). This information usually contains the patient’s full name, date of birth, address, email, phone number, marital status, gender, social security number, emergency contact, release of information, and primary insurance provider information.
Medical Coding
Charge capture: when the physicians record an episode of care into a medical claim system for billing purposes. Coding: Coding specialists translate the physician’s record into universally accepted medical codes that insurance companies use to determine reimbursement amounts.
Billing/Collection:
- Claims submission: based on set rates for each medical procedure code, health providers send a claim requesting payment from insurers. To avoid rejected claims, accuracy is essential.
- Insurer communications: Billing managers must communicate regularly with insurers to determine patients’ coverage levels and collect reimbursements without errors or denials.
- Payment collections: After insurance companies have paid requested bills, healthcare providers bill patients for any remaining balance. It is crucial to be transparent during this step to help patients understand charges and set up payment plans.
All this Revenue Cycle Management is like a land full of explosive mines. A misspelled word, a wrong code, or a birthday date can delay or deny payments from insurers.
To reduce human error in claims submission processes, healthcare data professionals use practice management software to automatically scan for mistakes and send error alerts or outsource the revenue cycle management to companies that can give 24/7 support and service.
Although the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) is being updated regularly, it is better to have a company dedicated to keeping up with ICD and insurance company policies.
About 90% of claim denials are preventable. Preventing claim denial can result in more than $5 million in additional revenue for an average hospital, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. In addition, revenue Cycle Management tools can generate reports that provide detailed finances and performance indicators.
