As soon as your medical practice sends a claim to the payer, you will only be counting down the days until you receive the actual payment.
Of course, it is a must to ensure that you receive the payment as soon as possible since delays will eventually cost your business. It is ideal to get the account receivables cleared in less than 30 days.
However, there are cases when the payment gets delayed. There are several factors why it takes a long time for a payer to make the payment.
Here are some of those factors:
- claim errors
- multiple denial appeal
- missing the right time for filing
Do your best to reduce the A/R turnaround time.
Here are some helpful tips that you can take advantage of:
1. File the claims as soon as possible
The sooner you submit the claims to the payer, the sooner you receive the payment. In major hospitals, it may take more or less two weeks to submit the claims. Once the payers (Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, etc.) receive the claim, they will process the payment within 15 days. For your medical practice, improve your claims submission process to consequently improve your cash flow.
2. Preempt denials
Invest in solutions that can help significantly reduce the number of mistakes in submitted claims. When there are mistakes in a submitted claim, the payers may deny it. You will then have to file a denial appeal. The process of clearing the account receivable will take longer than normal then. Thus, it is imperative to submit a clean claim if you want to receive the payment at the soonest time possible.
3. If there are denials, work through them immediately
No matter how much you perfect your process of submitting claims, there may be one or two mistakes that'll slip your fingers. Once you get the notice for denials, work on them immediately. Don't let them pile up if you don't want to stunt your cash flow. Remember that payments from appealed denials will take about 90 days and you can't wait that long to clear your account receivables.
4. Check your aged trial balance
The aged trial balance is the list of all account receivables with outstanding balance. It is highly recommended to check at least once a month to make sure that there are no account receivables that are more than 45 days old.
5. Track your claims denial rate and overall account receivable
Review and analyze your account receivables at least once every six months. Specifically, you have to check the denial rate. If it is too high, then consider improving the process for submitting claims.
