We are fast approaching the end of January and the point in the New Year when the majority of people's New Year's resolutions have already failed. This is, however, the time for renewed efforts to focus one's resources on achieving the desired goal. There are two keys to reaching your goals:
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Focus on a sequence of short term goals that make your larger goal seem more manageable (i.e., instead of "I will weigh 120 pounds by December 31st" set a series of goals such as "I will weigh 152 pounds by the end of February. I will weigh 148 pounds by the end of March." etc).
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- You can only achieve it by having a laser focus on the front end elements of medical billing. This is where the medical billing "game" is won or lost;
- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as "I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;
- Individual failures (rejected claims), provide fertile learning opportunities for improving your medical billing process. As long as you look at rejected claims with an eye towards how you can stop the rejections in the future and not just with a mind set of how do I fix this individual claim.
- Technology can be a powerful ally in achieving this goal. The use of coding tools, automated demographic verification tools and scrubbing claims will eliminate many sources of up-front errors that lead to claim rejections.
Use the end of January as the time for a more informed New Year's resolution for your medical practice. Today is the time for you to:
- Determine where you stand today (what percentage of your claims get paid on the first submission);
- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Develop a process for gleaning learning from claims that do not initially clear the clean claim hurdle.
Implement these steps and you can achieve significantly better medical billing results in 2009 than you realized in previous years.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 15246
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Focus on a sequence of short term goals that make your larger goal seem more manageable (i.e., instead of "I will weigh 120 pounds by December 31st" set a series of goals such as "I will weigh 152 pounds by the end of February. I will weigh 148 pounds by the end of March." etc).
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- You can only achieve it by having a laser focus on the front end elements of medical billing. This is where the medical billing "game" is won or lost;
- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as "I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;
- Individual failures (rejected claims), provide fertile learning opportunities for improving your medical billing process. As long as you look at rejected claims with an eye towards how you can stop the rejections in the future and not just with a mind set of how do I fix this individual claim.
- Technology can be a powerful ally in achieving this goal. The use of coding tools, automated demographic verification tools and scrubbing claims will eliminate many sources of up-front errors that lead to claim rejections.
Use the end of January as the time for a more informed New Year's resolution for your medical practice. Today is the time for you to:
- Determine where you stand today (what percentage of your claims get paid on the first submission);
- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Develop a process for gleaning learning from claims that do not initially clear the clean claim hurdle.
Implement these steps and you can achieve significantly better medical billing results in 2009 than you realized in previous years.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 15246
About the Author:
You can read more about the best practices of medical billing companies by going to the ClaimCare Medical Billing Services Blog. read how to achieve personal and business success at MyMerlin.net a new online mentoring site.
