Hospital accounts receivable play a vital role in managing your practice’s revenue cycle. But in an era where convenience is the king, many healthcare practices are shackled by the outdated payment processes that are directly reflected in their practices’ financial and functional wellbeing.
Despite the promise of integration of digital solutions to enhance practice efficiency and efficacy, the industry is adopting the innovations at a slower pace.
On top of that, both independent practitioners and healthcare facilities across the country are struggling with unprecedented staffing shortages and stratospheric wages. As a result, medical billing and coding processes are often erroneous in most of the practices which leads them to claim denial and revenue loss.
In this dynamic landscape of the healthcare industry, where practices are often experiencing high staff turnover, maintaining highly skilled resources for hospital accounts receivable management is challenging.
So, we are here to discuss the most common challenges in hospital AR management and some of the proven techniques that will help you reduce your hospital accounts receivable days and enhance revenue.
How Hospital Accounts Receivable Backlog Can Affect Your Practice?
As a provider, it is evident that you wouldn’t always have a work strategy that can enhance the financial performance of your practice.
But lack of attention to the piling up AR buckets ultimately reduces your chances for getting reimbursements. The older the AR bucket is the lower the chances of obtaining reimbursements.
This ultimately pushes you to write off several accounts as bad debts which substantially affects your practice’s revenue.
Gridlocks in Hospital Accounts Receivable Management Services
Hospital accounts receivable is one of the most critical parts in revenue cycle management. Unique requirements to accomplish the process breed a different set of challenges which can have substantial impact on cash flow.
Here we have listed some of the most common challenges in hospital AR management.
Complexity of medical billing and coding: Along with changing market dynamics and patient behavior, providers are in constant combat with medical billing and coding guidelines. Each patient interaction entails a multitude of coding regulations and claim submission guidelines, contributing to the administrative burden of the providers and making the billing and coding processes prone to errors.
Compliance intricacies: Staying updated and interpreting the regulatory requirements in the healthcare sphere is difficult and a lack of alignment of processes with the same can lead to claim denials, audits, fines and penalties.
Absence of technology: Outdated technology in managing hospital AR is often a major reason for increasing administrative burden and complexities within the process.
Restrictive modes of payment: Limited payment methods also become a challenge to the revenue collection process. Having multiple payment options and integrating more customer friendly and elastic methods will improve the way payments are collected from patients as well as the cycle of revenue collection.
Strategies to Manage Hospital Accounts Receivable
You can manage your hospital AR services efficiently and prevent revenue loss with the following strategies-
- Streamline billing and coding processes: You can consider automated billing and coding software systems that can eliminate errors and reduce the chances of claim rejections and denials.
- Communicate patient responsibilities: With the transformation in the industry, patient’s financial responsibilities within the care process are also changing. Make sure the patient understands their roles in care planning and payment processes.
- Engage with payers: Understanding the claim’s status requires consistent follow-up, tracking and monitoring. You must keep in touch with the payers to understand their requirements and status of your claim to ensure accurate and timely reimbursements.
- Expertise matters: Ultimately effective hospital accounts receivable management relies on having the right personnel, strategy and tools at hand. Therefore, a team of outsourced RCM professionals can be your go to move in managing financial health of your practice. Not only do they streamline your processes but also ensure optimized revenue in your practice.
End Note
You can prevent your piling up hospital accounts receivable by implementing the right strategy within the process. This will require your time, staff, money and other resources while affecting your practice’s revenue.
You must come up with a strategic approach in managing the AR according to your practice need. In the case of outsourcing hospital accounts receivable, the team of experts know exactly what it takes to transform your revenue in a positive direction while helping you sustain the quality of care.
Alleviate your financial strain by implementing effective hospital accounts receivable solution and improve economic outcome in no time!
