Medical claims have larger profit margins than vision claims, most eyecare professionals are aware of this. At first glance, filing more medical claims can feel like low-hanging fruit for expanding your reimbursement profits. However, if you don't set up your medical billing process in a specific way, you could open your practice up to an influx of unpaid claim or even the dreaded audit.
That's why we're discussing how to get started in today's blog. We touch on this topic in both our 6 Steps to Scaling Medical Billing webinar, presented by Shane Shepherd, and our Medical Optometry Billing and Coding Guide. Read an excerpt here to understand why you should follow our process:
Why Medical Optometrists Should Implement this Billing Process
Focus on administrative processes and the barriers you face when rendering services and actually getting paid for them.
The processes you currently use to run your claims department may be appropriate for your practice today, but may not lead you to success once you experience growth. When it comes to billing, the most common pitfalls are rejection and denial management and reporting. Most professionals are doing a fairly good job of initial submission, but managing the claims that are rejected can be trickier and time consuming. If you run an aging report and you see an unwanted backlog of claims or issues, you know the process stopped working. Either the process isn’t scalable or you need more labor. In either case, the solution is to define, amend, and create a more efficient process.
Lead People, Not Processes
Manual processes can be hard to teach others. If you’re the only person that knows how to work claims at the practice, it's true that fact may temporarily improve your job security. However, you want to lead people and not processes. This is essential to manage effectively and help the practice grow. Make sure you’re setting up an infrastructure that allows you to bring on new people and teach them the process quickly. Your leadership and responsibility will show, so have confidence that you’re not only increasing the worth your practice but also, yourself.
Watch the complete webinar to see how we break down the cost per process:
