In the healthcare world, proper and efficient revenue cycle management can provide your organization with the best workflow and processes to increase payments. It is crucial to the financial health of your business to manage your office’s claims process, payment, and revenue generation. By incorporating Revenue Cycle Management, or RCM, your healthcare organization can keep tabs on the claims process to ensure that you are not losing money or writing off bad debt.

Patient billing can be a hassle for any office. Trying to coordinate patient eligibility, co-payment collection, medical coding, claims management, bill collection, and denied claims can be a major pain point for any practice. Often, staff is not properly trained to manage one aspect of the billing process, let alone the entire billing cycle. This can lead to confusion and costly mistakes.

Furthermore, when multiple staff members are working to complete the billing process, lack of effective communication can cause errors. Claims may be denied, and what’s worse, those claims may never be resubmitted for approval. These mistakes and errors reduce the revenue your practice brings in, and can eventually lead to the failure of your business.

The efficient use of RCM Best Practices will Improve a Practices Work Flow

For the best results, a proper workflow, satisfactory training, and effective communication must occur. With RCM, your business can become financially efficient. RCM provides your organization with the ability to accurately complete the billing process on the first try.

When deciding on RCM, choose a provider who understands the entire process, including fraud prevention and industry standards. Pick a service that offers the best and most trained staff to help your practice institute efficient RCM best practices and processes. Ensure that the RCM provider is willing and able to answer all of your RCM-related questions.

Once you have implemented RCM in your office, you will begin by checking patient eligibility. With RCM, it is easy to pre-approve insurance eligibility and ensure that your organization will get paid for that patient’s visit. By processing this information before appointment check-in, you will avoid carrier payment/reimbursement delays. You will also be able to confirm co-payment amounts so that patients pay the correct sum upon their visit.

RCM can track the patient’s visit, so their claim can be processed smoothly along the entire revenue cycle. Even if multiple employees are working on a claim, they can efficiently communicate and access information through RCM. Importantly, by using RCM, medical coding becomes more efficient, thus decreasing denials and the time it takes to collect payment. If a denial does occur, with RCM, you can rest assured that the resubmittal will be quickly and properly addressed.

Outstanding bills can also be promptly and more easily managed by utilizing patient follow up. Patients can also have access to online bill payment, which is easier for them, and more efficient for your office.

With the full coordination of the revenue cycle process, fewer errors will occur, less resources will be utilized, payments will be made more quickly, and as a result, your practice’s revenue will increase. If you are looking for a partner in revenue cycle management, Commonwealth Medical Management Services, Inc. can provide you with the best services for your healthcare organization. Call today to find out how you can start improving your practice’s overall efficiencies and its “bottom-line”.