Healthcare professionals have one of the most challenging jobs in the industry, carrying enormous responsibilities but frequently lacking the resources required to meet organizational needs. There are numerous challenges that medical practitioners face daily across the country. If these common issues are not resolved, they can lead to significant problems and reduce incoming revenues, cash flow, and patient care quality.
To avoid negative consequences of these difficulties, practitioners must remain alert when handling organizations. They can reduce the possibility of problems getting out of control or affecting irreversible loss by keeping on top of ongoing operations. In this article, we discuss how to overcome the possible medical billing challenges:
Efficient EMR Utilization
Health professionals have limited their operating time due to inadequate EMR, as clunky EMR interfaces and poor communication between processes are significant issues. According to a research, physicians spend more than half of their time on EMR, while patients receive only 27% of their time. Physicians could use the following suggestions to boost EMR productivity:
- Patients can be asked to enter data into online sites.
- Some of the tasks can be delegated to your support staff.
- To simplify data entry, you can operate with your EMR vendor to customize configurations and reduce unnecessary steps.
Administrative Issues
Administrative complications can be a significant burden for medical practices attempting to address the complex healthcare industry. Regulatory considerations, staffing issues, payment breakdowns, and communication problems appear to be worsening over time.
To address these issues, healthcare professionals can concentrate on streamlining administrative procedures by conducting an audit of current operations. They can provide a framework for requirements and best practices for employees to follow. Healthcare professionals can recognize costly and inappropriate procedures that can be removed by reviewing operational data.
Identify The Source Of Denials
Repetitive errors must be identified by tracking and analyzing data. The first step toward understanding why claim rejections continue to occur is to audit and analyze the information that would lead to them. Obtaining information such as, rejections from a specific set of payers, the type of refusals occurring, and the volume of denied claims.
To overcome these problems, physicians must focus on having analytics tools and a full-time staffing person to handle this can be the best long-term and cost-effective solution.
Coding And billing Technology Workflow
Third technological challenge that physician practices and their billing partner organizations face is revenue management, specifically coding and billing processes. The most serious problem occurs when hospital patient data is inaccurately transferred into physician practice EMR systems. Coding and billing may be severely disrupted in this case.
To overcome this issue, using a third-party agency for medical billing and coding solves this challenge. They ensure that each data element is tracked throughout the process. The billing workflow is completed quickly, and inconsistencies are addressed early in the coding and billing workflow to avoid claim denials.
Getting Paid Constantly
Annually, reimbursement for independent doctors becomes more difficult. Keeping up with CMS’s ever-changing reporting standards and contractual distinctions among commercial payers can be a thorough job. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), approximately 15% of evaluation and management (E/M) services are paid incorrectly. Payers deny claim for two main reasons: insufficient paperwork and inaccurate coding. As a result, proper documentation and coding can assist you in avoiding denials and ensuring adequate reimbursement levels.
Physicians must use the following measures to receive proper reimbursement:
- Provide appropriate and necessary services.
- Precise coding for provided services.
- Recognize significant parameters for E/M codes such as patient type (new or established), service establishment, and level of service offered based on history, investigation, and decision difficulty.
Negotiating with payers
Today, significant contracts are essential for physician’s survival. Whether it’s an agreement with payers or not, many doctors don’t negotiate as well as they should or even understand what’s negotiable and what isn’t. If you collaborate in a solo or small practice, you may believe that payers will swallow you whole and that you have no negotiating power. However, if you take proper steps, you can start negotiating for the rates you deserve.
Here are some pointers:
- Determine your break-even point by analyzing your funding and fee schedules, and see if the insurance company meets this criterion.
- Display the value of your medical practice by presenting positive quality-of-care data and illustrating a pattern of keeping things low-cost.
Conclusion
Outsourcing your billing tasks to a company that focuses solely on billing practices makes it easier to keep track of claim status, delays, and requests for extra information. Such specialized and centered knowledge about accurate billing processes expedites claims processing and ensures quicker reimbursement. We are among the best medical billing companies in the United States, and our procedures are HIPAA compliant. Our certified professionals can assist you in navigating these obstacles. We can help your physician practice reduce claim denials and improve compliance.
