Shrinking margins, higher patient financial responsibility, and complex documentation processes are some of healthcare organizations’ biggest revenue cycle challenges in this growing and intricate market. These and other factors have made many organizations take stock of their revenue cycle management processes — and seek faster, simpler ways to collect.
In short, many organizations are realizing they need a way better revenue cycle. Here are three improvements that can facilitate process improvements, increased revenue, and accelerated reimbursement from both patients and payers:
1. Way Smarter: Collect more, stress less, and reduce time to payment for claims revenue. Monitor and assign work files to your billing team and have them actively work these files and see them through to completion. You’ll need to know:
• The number of outstanding accounts and invoices
• The number of accounts and invoices worked
• The number of accounts placed in the tickler file
• The exact type of accounts worked (for example all accounts > 90 days for payers X and Y)
• Performance quantity and quality per employee
Knowing what work needs to be done and empowering your team members to prioritize which files are processed is a surefire way to speed payments.
Access our on-demand webinar to learn how you can prevent way more claims denials.
2. Way Simpler: Simplify and unify the patient payment process. Streamline patient collections and speed payments by offering patients a range of digital payment options, such as automated payment plans, an online portal, and even mobile payment options. Combine this with the ability to offer patients estimates at the time of service to not only improve patient satisfaction by improving price transparency, but get paid faster too.
Our 2018 Patient Payment CheckUp™ Survey Report uncovered another benefit to updating your patient payment process: you’ll increase patient referrals by up to 69%.
3. Way Faster: Collect more with less through automation. Collect more from payers and patients with less cost using automated tools that improve team efficiency and give patients the digital conveniences they crave. For the front office, consider:
• Registration and scheduling improvements. Add tablets and kiosks for patients to complete their registration forms; offer self-scheduling to streamline appointment setting and send text reminders for scheduled appointments rather than having a staff member call each patient individually.
• Patient financial clearance. Use technology to conduct demographic and insurance sweeps to determine if patient information is correct and tackle real-time eligibility checks — both will increase your efficiency in capturing revenue and decrease the people power needed to do it.
• Payment at the time of service. Make online payer fee schedules available electronically to make it easier for staff to calculate payments; develop scripts they can access at the front desk to help them feel confident in collecting payment upfront; and keep a payment method stored in order to collect small balances from patients.
Speeding your revenue cycle is easy with a partner like Waystar.
