With patients assuming greater responsibility for their medical bills, it can be difficult for healthcare organizations to obtain full payment for services rendered. Inefficient billing and administrative processes also contribute to this problem and result in money getting left on the table. In order to maximize revenue cycle management efficiencies and increase medical collections, healthcare organizations must find innovative ways to streamline billing tasks, ensure clean claim submission, and secure payment on outstanding accounts.
Here are a few technologies that are helping hospitals, physician practices, and other medical facilities do just that:
FROM THE PROVIDER’S END:
Integrated EHR and Practice Management Software
Electronic health record (EHR) software can improve care quality and clinical workflow – but it can also lead to improvements in revenue cycle management, especially when used in conjunction with practice management (PM) software. With EHR/PM systems, all data needed for billing purposes (i.e. diagnosis and procedure codes, insurance information and authorizations, demographics, and referrals) can be found in one centralized location. This allows the charge capture process to be streamlined, automates claims submission, and leaves less room for error.
Patient Portal Software
Patient portal software has been advertised as a tool to help improve office productivity, lessen staff workload and increase patient engagement, but it also offers organizations an important revenue cycle tool: online bill pay. This feature gives patients the tranquility of viewing their medical bills privately and on their own time; and it can increase the chance of repayment. Many systems even allow patients to sign up for automatic payments, meaning a specified amount of money gets withdrawn from their bank account each month to pay their bill.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
IT SERVICES AN RCM COMPANY PROVIDES:
Dialers and IVR
Just like EHR software can help providers become more productive, dialers and interactive voice response technology (IVR) can help billing staff reach more patients. This is due to the fact that it is much faster for a computer to make a call attempt than for a person to do it manually. In fact, some dialers can make up to 100,000 call attempts in a day. The benefit for billers is that they are only connected to calls when an attempt is successful, meaning less time is spent listening to ring tones and busy signals and more time is spent collecting medical debt from patients.
Skip tracing
Patient demographic information that is missing from the billing system or is incorrect is called a skip. Skips in patient records can slow down the medical collections process or stop it altogether, as they prevent healthcare organizations from communicating with patients about outstanding bills. Skip tracing software allows billing companies to use available demographic data to search through online databases and public records in order to locate patients who have moved or changed their number. Finding these patients is the first step to getting paid for services provided.
