Helping Medical Practices Increase Revenue

With Covid-19 changing the way healthcare operates, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, there’s a lot more talk about universal healthcare, also known as Medicare for All, but what could it mean for patients and providers? While the debate around Universal healthcare has been front and center for years, the growing healthcare needs of a country affected by a global pandemic has brought the topic to the forefront once again.

What is universal healthcare? How will it work? What would it mean for a medical practice? Here’s a closer look at a few things you may need to know.

Cost-effectiveness is one of the biggest reasons that medical practices outsource to third-party medical billing services. How do you know if your prospective medical billing company is telling you the truth about their offerings? Will it be too late for you to find out about their performance? How much will it cost you afterward when it's too late?

Medical billing involves claim processing with multiple insurance companies, locations, services, and vendors. Outsourcing benefits include improving efficiency and boosting revenue, but it's critical to make sure you outsource to the right company.

Every medical practice deal with claims denials, which is a notice that the claim has not been paid for specific reason. While there are many different denial codes you may see from time to time, one of the most common denial codes is the denial for a duplicate claim or service. Unfortunately, duplicate claims are both counter-productive and costly for your practice, not to mention, they can end up getting you into trouble. Too many errors can result in the imposition of program integrity actions by the Medicare administrative contractor against your practice. This means it’s essential to learn more about this common denial code, how to avoid it, and what you can do when it does happen.  

The global Covid-19 pandemic has gone far beyond thousands of infections and deaths, it’s resulted in the closure of businesses and job losses on a scale that hasn’t been seen in the U.S. in recent history. Unfortunately, job losses that have come as a result of Covid-19 have resulted in many individuals losing benefits, including their health insurance.

Treating uninsured patients always presents challenges for medical practices, but the sudden increase in the number of uninsured individuals creates additional difficulties for physicians who may already be struggling financially as a result of the pandemic. 

Claim denials are one of the most significant barriers to efficient revenue cycle management. Denials not only require additional resources and time for reprocessing, but they also slow down your practice’s cash flow by delaying payment. Statistics show that around $262 billion in medical claims get denied initially, but even worse, more than 60% of those claims do not get reworked, which means that’s a lot of money down the drain.