We all know that rejected insurance claims cost your practice, but how much exactly? An average sized practice generates 200 claims a month and with an average denial rate of 8%, 16 claims are rejected monthly. It costs up to $40 per appealed denial, which can run your practice up to $7,680 per year! But fear not, we are here to share a few tips on how to prevent claim rejections.
Last month, the VisionWeb Insurance Team attended an informative webinar hosted by Emdeon about investing in information technology at your practice. Essentially, the more money your practice spends on IT needs, the more efficient it becomes. This in turn can improve your billing and business habits, and increase revenue! Here is a re-cap of the key points addressed at the webinar and helpful tips that your practice should implement as soon as possible.
In 2002, Medical Economic Magazine mentioned that even when most physician practices have computers, they will still be miles away from being an ultra-efficient paperless office. True enough, ten years later, we are still mired in paper processes! Paper shuffling is a common cause of inefficiency and denials in the billing process. Other reasons include:
Don’t let inefficiency come in the way of your bottom line! Start identifying issues at your practice by:
Most practice management systems maintain a date of entry, date of service, and date of submission that can help you identify the numbers above. As you run through the process, also compare your patient claim filing process to the traditional and best practices cycle.
We hope that the process of insurance claims at your practice looks more similar to the best practices cycle. But to avoid even dealing with a collection agency and getting straight to an efficient process, here are more features we can learn from the best practices.
The best practices make sure that this check list is done while the patient is still in the clinic. Talk about efficiency!
Now that half of the work is already done on the front end, these responsibilities help the back-end finish up the process as quickly as possible.
Remember the inefficiency of paper processes? Let a clearinghouse handle your claims! Electronic remittance saves time and money. Paper claim handling costs $3-$6 per claim, whereas filing them electronically cost $1 or less. Other expenses saved include supplies, postage and labor cost to manually send patient statements.
So now that you know what you need, do you have the resources to help you through the process? Here’s where a clearinghouse comes in play. VisionWeb’s insurance processing services gives you access to patient eligibility checks, claim uploads, submission and tracking and ERAs for free, among many other features and benefits.
Using technology can pay off and improve the opportunities in the practice, and for the most part, generate more revenue after operating cost as you increase the amount spent on IT. But also, don’t forget that you are spending the money to implement the technology effectively, so get the most out of your investment.
You would refer your patient to a specialist, so why not refer your ROI to an IT specialist?
A great deal of work was put into the presentation and we hope you’ve seen the benefits of information technology at your practice. For more details on case studies, billing department auditing and more, watch the webinar.