The strength and sustainability of a medical facility depend upon the strength and efficiency of its billing processes. To sustain a thriving healthcare business, you must look for ways to improve your medical claims billing process. Let’s take a look at four steps you can take to make your billing and collection procedures more efficient.
1. Keep your patient files up to date
The foundation of your billing procedures is data. Without relevant, up-to-date information, you cannot handle claims billing efficiently. Refresh insurance information and other vital data. Update this every time a patient visits. Unfortunately, if you are stuck with outdated contact information or were not informed when a patient switched insurance companies, you will have a harder time collecting payment.
2. Automate fundamental billing functions
You can make your billing department more efficient by taking certain rudimentary functions out of your staff’s hands so that they have time to handle more complex matters. Identify those aspects of billing that are repetitive and automate them. Your IT system will be more efficient at handling these tasks anyway, and your staff will have the time and space to focus on patient-centric tasks.
3. Train your employees properly – and update their training when necessary
Update and expand your employee training programs to include components that enable them to find the relevant filing requirements as well as to access patient files. Each insurance company has slightly different requirements. With proactive, up-to-date training, you can ensure that your staff can handle them all.
4. Outsource your troublesome collection functions
As a community service provider, it can be difficult at times to deal with the task of collecting outstanding funds from patients. For this reason, it could be a good idea to outsource these collections to a third party that is objective and can ensure that the funds are collected, but who can also handle your patients with sensitivity.
Grace Federal Solutions LLC offers healthcare recruitment services, as well as healthcare financial management and healthcare consulting services. Contact us for more ways to improve your medical claims billing process.
