A well designed and executed Revenue Cycle Denial Management system can improve a medical practice or facility's collections by up to 20 percent. If your medical billing team or medical billing company does not have a proper denial management system in place then you are, without question, losing money.
There is a lot of confusion about the definition of denial management. If you ask five medical billing experts what this means you will probably receive six answers.
To find out if your billing department or a current billing company is deploying a Revenue Cycle Denial Management System on your behalf ask them: (1) What is their Revenue Cycle Denial Management strategy; (2) What process do they use to methodically measure it and (3) what are the quantifiable results of it. If you do not receive rapid, concise answers with clear metrics then there is not a proper denial management system in place for your medical billing.
A good denial management system is not simply about working denials, it is about systematically gathering the data required to eliminate denials. Working denials is like pumping water from your basement when a pipe bursts. Denial management is about fixing the pipe so you no longer need to pump water from the basement.
Fixing core denial problems and increasing collections requires keeping track of, understanding the magnitude of, and reporting on every claim that is denied by a payer. Tracking all denial across all payers is critical. The proper denial management system provides the data required to stop the root cause of problems and significantly increase the rate of first claim submission acceptance. If your practice is not measuring this level of detail then money, significant money, is being lost in the flood of denied claims pouring into your practice.
Although many practice management systems can properly track claim denial information, few systems have the rare combination of having been both properly implemented to track the data and properly understood to extract the data in a meaningful manner. Without both of these elements the denial management process cannot properly provide the feedback on denials that is required. Even when this information is present, often there is no mechanism for feeding the information back into the medical billing process to correct billing problems.
Your denial management system must 1) Track all denials by payer; 2) Report on the reason for the denials and the number of claims denied for each reason; and 3) Allow for in depth analysis and comparison across payers to identify important trends. Once these capabilities are in place, the medical billing specialists can create targeted process changes and claim edits/rules that will fix systemic billing issues and increase collections.
The in depth analysis described above also allows payers that are habitual violators of Clean Claim Rules to be identified and pursued. The data and analysis will allow many opportunities for process improvements and revenue enhancement for the practice.
If you implement a powerful denial management system you can optimize your medical billing and speed up your cash flow. As previously mentioned, a strong denial management system can increase your collections by 20 percent or more.
Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II - 15246
There is a lot of confusion about the definition of denial management. If you ask five medical billing experts what this means you will probably receive six answers.
To find out if your billing department or a current billing company is deploying a Revenue Cycle Denial Management System on your behalf ask them: (1) What is their Revenue Cycle Denial Management strategy; (2) What process do they use to methodically measure it and (3) what are the quantifiable results of it. If you do not receive rapid, concise answers with clear metrics then there is not a proper denial management system in place for your medical billing.
A good denial management system is not simply about working denials, it is about systematically gathering the data required to eliminate denials. Working denials is like pumping water from your basement when a pipe bursts. Denial management is about fixing the pipe so you no longer need to pump water from the basement.
Fixing core denial problems and increasing collections requires keeping track of, understanding the magnitude of, and reporting on every claim that is denied by a payer. Tracking all denial across all payers is critical. The proper denial management system provides the data required to stop the root cause of problems and significantly increase the rate of first claim submission acceptance. If your practice is not measuring this level of detail then money, significant money, is being lost in the flood of denied claims pouring into your practice.
Although many practice management systems can properly track claim denial information, few systems have the rare combination of having been both properly implemented to track the data and properly understood to extract the data in a meaningful manner. Without both of these elements the denial management process cannot properly provide the feedback on denials that is required. Even when this information is present, often there is no mechanism for feeding the information back into the medical billing process to correct billing problems.
Your denial management system must 1) Track all denials by payer; 2) Report on the reason for the denials and the number of claims denied for each reason; and 3) Allow for in depth analysis and comparison across payers to identify important trends. Once these capabilities are in place, the medical billing specialists can create targeted process changes and claim edits/rules that will fix systemic billing issues and increase collections.
The in depth analysis described above also allows payers that are habitual violators of Clean Claim Rules to be identified and pursued. The data and analysis will allow many opportunities for process improvements and revenue enhancement for the practice.
If you implement a powerful denial management system you can optimize your medical billing and speed up your cash flow. As previously mentioned, a strong denial management system can increase your collections by 20 percent or more.
Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II - 15246
About the Author:
Carl Mays is President & CEO of ClaimCare Medical Billing Services, a medical billing company with clients throughout the United States. Carl has been assisting clients with Medical Billing problems and practice management solutions for more than 10 years. You can learn more about medical billing problems and solutions by reading additional medical billing articles by Carl.
