Patient Collections: Insourcing vs. Outsourcing

From the smallest medical offices to the largest hospitals – they all have one thing in common: patient collections. Every practice and hospital must find the most effective way to handle their patient collections. At some point you’re going to consider whether keeping your patient collections services in house is the best option. There are many benefits to outsourcing this necessity, and VARO Healthcare can ensure you reap those benefits in your business.

Understanding the Impact TCPA Compliance has on Healthcare Providers

The TCPA was originally designed to curb the numerous unwanted marketing calls that were being dialed into households on a daily basis.  People were discouraged and outraged about the growing number of aggressive calls that were dialed into their homes nightly.  Many of these calls were done automatically (through a dialer system or "robocalls") which is the reason the act was passed.

According to the Medical Group Management Association, high-performing medical groups have a four percent claims denial rate. If your denial rate is over 4%, don’t blame your payers; instead, look at your business’s processes. Timing problems, manual mistakes, and input oversights may be causing most of the denials. 

Something you could do before submitting claims to make sure they're clean is ask yourself the following questions! Clean claims = less denaisl. Print them out and post them to your bulletin board!  

Monitor these five issues to improve your billing approach and decrease your denial rate.

1.    Is the Claim Legible?

Investing (not MONEY) in Patient Experience Can Help Hospital Revenue

The patient experience is a critical factor that sometimes gets ignored in the hospital setting (or maybe not… but it DOES get forgotten). The primary focus of a hospital is to heal the sick and cure the injured. However, hospitals are also businesses interested in not only covering their costs but making a profit as well. As a result, the patient experience has to be kept as a (top) priority.

I’ve been asked the same question time and time again when I'm in the field talking about self-pay collections and bad debt - what question you ask? I'll get there. Collecting invoices from a stubborn or intentionally uncooperative patient for medical services can be enough of a problem, but when the patient seems to have “no money whatsoever” to pay the bill many hospitals and clinics immediately assume the case has to be written off as a loss. That's far from true, but unfortunately it seems like the only logical choice due to a lack of awareness (or wanting to keep the patient from filing a complaint!). In reality, there are a number of ways collections can be made if done in a smart, persistent fashion. There are some accounts that will take a while to get paid, but persistence does often pay off in the end (trust me, I KNOW persistence!) Finally, the question I get asked...

When you buy a car, it’s your job as a buyer to get the most amount of car for the least amount of cash.

West Chester, PA -- Alyssa DiSalvatore, of VARO Healthcare, sister company to BYL Collection Services, LLC, a first party self-pay collections and third party bad debt collections agency located in West Chester, met her members of the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation to discuss the most critical issue impacting the healthcare professionals.

With ICD-10 being postponed again, you may be left with some very important questions. It's best to start at the beginning by understanding what ICD-10 actually is, how it works, and the best ways to implement this program - with or without delay. Understand how to convert to ICD-10 no matter when the deadline may be, and how this can help your billing and business.

ICD-10 Basics

ICD-10 is a diagnostic coding system used to classify medical diagnosis and procedures around the world - just not in the United States. The US uses ICD-9-CM. The difference between these two coding systems is essentially variety. The new system has 69,000 classifications, while the old system has 13,600 codes. Why so many more codes? Simply put, technology. New technological advances in diagnosis and treatment have left many procedures without an accurate description. Switching to the new coding system means that health information can be both billed and tracked more accurately, and data is easier to share across the World Health Organization networks.

Healthcare

The process of outsourcing a hospital’s accounts receivable or any other medical office for that matter, does not start with handing over accounts and waiting to see what happens next. Instead, accounts receivable management starts with a good amount of planning and understanding what benefits A/R outsourcing will provide a hospital in the first place. When accounts are actually transferred for management, the office will already have a clear plan on what to expect as well as how to redirect resources now freed up from managing accounts directly.

The beginning of each year brings unmet deductibles for a large majority of the patients that you might treat.