Medical Bill Collections Archives - Advanced Reimbursement Solutions

How to Make Your Medical Bill Collections Follow-Ups More Effective

Effective medical bill collections results in a quick resolution of your claims. Sadly, most practices ignore the fact that timely claim follow-ups can make a huge difference in getting paid. In well-established practices, follow-ups begin as early as 7 days after submitting claims for payments. These businesses understand that immediate efforts reduce accounts receivable days and boost their cash flow.

The good news is that you can borrow a leaf from these practices. You may not have adequate staffing due to limited resources, but here’s what your medical billing specialist can do to make your follow-ups more efficient.

Be Prepared for Initial Contact

Make sure you have all the necessary information before getting an insurance representative on the phone. This means thoroughly researching the account to help you ask proper questions. For starters, make sure you have the insured’s personal details, like date of birth, policy number, etc. And while on the phone, strive to get information about the insurance representative. Be sure to get his/her name, employee ID number or extension number and a call reference number before hanging up. This will make it easier to provide feedback when you make subsequent follow-ups.

Ask Several Questions

The main goal of medical bill collections follow-ups is to determine when to expect payment. If 30 days have elapsed since you submitted the claim for payment, the insurance representative should provide a reason for delayed payment.

At the end of your conversation, you should have detailed information about:

• Status of the claim
• Payment schedule
• Payment process
• Amount of payment
• Check number
• Reason for delayed payment
• Medical records needed

Be Assertive

Sometimes, insurance companies find ways to delay payment, so don’t be afraid to challenge their representatives. For instance, don’t let them get away with bogus information when discussing claims. Instead of giving up, ask to speak with their supervisor or someone of authority.

Take Appropriate Actions

After finding out the status of your claim, take the right steps to speed up the process. The action you take will greatly depend on the reason given for delayed payment. Fortunately, most medical billing specialists know how to resolve them.

Involve the Patient

Most practices avoid this strategy, so use it as a last resort. Find creative ways to get patients involved without bothering them.

Sometimes, medical bill collections need follow-ups to yield quick results. How you conduct the follow-ups can expedite your claim payments or cause more delays, and these simple tips can help. Want to learn more? Turn to Advanced Reimbursement Solutions to speak with an experienced medical billing specialist in Phoenix or Wilmington. Contact us today to set up your appointment!

Medical Bill Collections: Is Your Practice Crossing the Line?

In recent years, healthcare practices have become more aggressive in their medical bill collections. With the high costs of providing services, it is extremely important for practices to maximize reimbursements which largely depend on patient payments.

You can lose thousands of dollars if sufficient strategies are not geared towards collecting deductibles, coinsurance, and copays. Collecting these expenses from your patients is as important as collecting from insurance companies. But some efforts can lead to poor customer service. So, when do medical bill collections cross the line?

Not Giving Enough Time for Payment Preparations

Some practices don’t give patients enough time to make payment arrangements. This can discourage patients from coming back to your medical facility. It is wiser to give them enough time to make arrangements before initiating the collection process.

Overlooking Delinquent Bills

After offering services, most patients will not have the urgency to pay on time unless they’re prompted. Therefore, remind them of their bills when they visit and encourage them to pay.

Allowing Bills to Accrue

Unless it is an emergency, it is not good practice to allow patients to accrue bills even when they cannot pay. For example, allowing them to continue receiving treatment without paying sends the wrong impression about your practice. If you want your medical bill collections to be better and make your patients happy, avoid the mistakes above and adopt these strategies:

Advise Your Patients in Advance

Before patients visit your facility, inform them of your collection policy. This way, they will be more prepared to make payments on time. This is particularly important for patients who have to meet a certain deductible on an out of pocket basis.

Offer Self-Pay Discounts

For self-pay patients, offering discounts for timely payments can make a huge difference in your cash flow.

Offer Different Payment Plans

Out of pocket expenses can be extremely high for some patients. And the best way to manage them is to offer different payment options. That way, patients can continue receiving treatment without feeling the huge burden of paying bills.

Get Started

For your facility to offer great services and satisfy patients, you must find the right process to collect coinsurance, deductibles, and co-payments. Advanced Reimbursement Solutions wants you to have the best process. Contact us today to consult with an expert in Phoenix or Wilmington. We look forward to speaking with you!

6 Strategies to Boost Your Medical Bill Collections

Managing medical bill collections can be a challenge for healthcare providers. And the fact that over 70 million Americans have pending medical bills or debts adds salt to injury. So if you want to improve your billing collection process, here are six simple ways to do so.

Allow and Automate Financial Assistance

Some patients are eligible for financial assistance. So instead of accumulating bills until they’re written off as bad debts, allow your patients to get financial assistance automatically. With the right technology, you can perform financial assistance screening when registering new patients. This allows your practice to determine whether a patient is eligible for financial assistance. This can increase your chances of collecting payment.

Verify Patient Data

Most data needed for medical bill collections is usually obtained at the point of access. As such, ensure the data is correct for an efficient collection. When the data obtained is wrong, or entered incorrectly, it creates an obstacle when it comes to getting paid.

Verify Eligibility

The process of verifying eligibility can be time-consuming. To increase your odds of getting accurate data, employ both EDI and web-based searches. Scheduled batch queries enable you to check for new updates and changes in insurance coverage, while real-time queries give you the opportunity to get current information about a patient. Both strategies give room for collecting accurate information, improving patient expectations, and getting updates quickly. Taking time on eligibility verification also minimizes your chances of denials, which can increase your medical bill collections.

Set Up Payment Plans

With the right technology, you can set up suitable deposit and payment schedules for your patients. Most healthcare practices are even using retail-style collection techniques, such as upfront deposits and secure storage for credit card information to boost future collections.

Create an Easy Process of Collecting Payment

Most medical practices are now using online systems that allow patients to post payments. These practices often report increased medical bill collections. You can borrow a leaf and take your practice to a new level.

Make the Billing Process Simple and Clear

The surest way to improve your medical bill collections is to remove obstacles in your payment processes and make it clearer. For instance, you can consolidate family payment information, bills from the lab, physician, and hospital, and provide online payment plans. These approaches can even reduce the cost of your billing process.

Medical bill collections can be improved with the right approaches. To learn more, please consult the specialists at Advanced Reimbursement Solutions. Contact us today to book an appointment and speak with a member of our team in Phoenix or Wilmington.

Handling Medical Bill Collections with Advanced Reimbursement Solutions

Medical bill collections are not something that people like to talk about when discussing medicine, but the truth of the matter is that healthcare has a cost. In order for doctors to be able to provide their patients with the care that they need, doctors need to know that they’re going to be reimbursed for their services. They also need to have the money to rent the space that they use, purchase medical equipment, and purchase any medication needed to treat their patients while they are performing surgeries and other procedures.

The problem comes when patients either cannot or choose not to pay for their medical care. There is a raging argument that is going on in many Western societies about the responsibility the government has to help cover some of the cost for their citizens. But in some countries, the argument is neither here nor there. Doctors perform a service and the patients pay. When patients don’t pay, doctors find themselves unable to continue to provide future patients with services. This means that steps need to be taken to improve patient accountability.

Doctors do not become doctors because they want to deal with medical bill collections. The primary reason why most doctors become doctors is because they want to help people who are suffering. However, when their patients aren’t paying them, doctors and those who work in medical facilities find themselves also working as bill collectors. And it’s not always that doctors are trying to collect money from patients. Often times, their gripe is with insurance companies. Insurance companies have a whole bunch of policies they put in place to protect themselves from being defrauded. They set up certain codes and certain regulations determining how they will pay, when they will pay, and who they will pay. All of these things make medical bill collections a challenge.

Doctors are not always at the ready to discuss financial matters with patients. Consequently, doctors and their medical staff need to work with a company that can focus solely on collecting money. They need a company that understands billing codes and makes sure that there is a timely reimbursement for the services and for the products that doctors offer to patients. Advanced Reimbursement Solutions has been a godsend for many in the medical community when it comes to medical bill collections and other matters. It has allowed them to focus on providing their patients with care, while Advanced Reimbursement Solutions focuses on seeing to it that the expenses connected to medical care are covered. Contact us today in Phoenix or Wilmington to learn more!