The medical billing process can be a hassle for health care organizations and patients, but it doesn’t have to be. Learn how to create an efficient health care billing process so patients pay their bills on time and your practice operates efficiently. 

Medical Billing Tips and Tricks

Improve medical billing efficiency with these suggestions:

1. Establish a Clear Collections Process

A structured collections process is the foundation of a provider’s financial stability. With clear-cut steps to follow, office staff will know how to present claims, and patients will understand what’s expected of them and how to meet their obligations. 

Incorporate the following steps at the beginning of your revenue cycle flowchart: 

• Gather patient demographics: Health care is a personal service, so don’t hesitate to collect as much patient information as possible. Address, phone number, email, place of employment and photo ID are standard patient details you should compile. 
• Confirm contact information: Check with patients periodically to verify their contact information. This way, you won’t waste time and money sending mail to the wrong place.  
• Get permission to leave messages: Include a permission form in new-patient paperwork that allows you to leave voice messages concerning patient billing. 
• Confirm eligibility regularly: Verify patients’ insurance eligibility during each visit to avoid claim denials. 
• Communicate payment options: Inform patients of what payment methods you accept, what payments cover and if you offer payment plans. 

2. Promptly Handle Denied or Rejected Claims

Rejected and denied claims are not the same. If an insurer finds errors in your claim, it will go unprocessed, and they will return it to you as a rejected claim. A denied claim has been processed but found to be unpayable due to either a discovered contract violation between the patient and payer or another critical mistake caught after processing. 

In each case, the payer will send the claim back to the biller, explaining the problem. You can edit and return a rejected claim, but you must appeal a denied claim before resubmitting, which is costly and time-consuming.

The best way to avoid rejections and denials is to submit claims wholly and accurately the first time. However, everyone makes mistakes, so if they arise, handle claims and rejections promptly. Contact the payer and have them explain the original claim’s errors and provide status updates on current claims as they get processed. This information can help accelerate the claim correction process and reduce appeal and resubmission times. 

3. Diligently Follow up With Inquiries 

While billing specialists maintain constant contact with insurers and patients, conducting follow-up sessions is necessary to ensure everyone’s inquiries and concerns have been addressed. A claim may be denied without a follow-up procedure, delaying your income. 

Diligently following up with questions and concerns can:

• Contribute to a reliable flow of income, providing you with financial stability
• Help you recoup delinquent payments 
• Shorten the length of time that bills are allowed to go unpaid
• Help avoid missing claims, which is a significant source of payment delays
• Help retrieve pending claims that require additional information 

4. Collect Upfront

Don’t be afraid to ask patients to pay for the care they receive at the time of services rendered. This practice presents patients with their monetary obligations while saving time that office staff would spend on billing paperwork.

You can avoid the poor revenue cycle management that comes with waiting to collect by developing a straightforward payment policy and informing patients of its terms. Consider displaying a sign in your waiting room that explains when patients should make payments and which payment methods you accept. 

Another useful practice is to remind patients of their financial responsibility at the time of their appointment. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to elicit payment. After all, no one likes receiving surprise medical bills in the mail weeks later. 

5. Provide Cost Estimates

Consider implementing cost estimation tools. These can streamline the medical billing process by determining the estimated costs of a visit before the patient even arrives. Patients will have an idea of the money they’ll owe, staff can more easily request payment and providers can gain a better understanding of the cost of their services.

Cost transparency goes a long way in building a solid reputation and patient loyalty. Medical expenses are no small matter, so when patients feel that you are open and genuine about the cost of your services, they’re more likely to see you as an ally for their health rather than another looming bill collector. 

Post-Insurance Collection Tips

Aside from speeding up the insurance collecting process, you’ll also need to focus on the other side of billing —  receiving timely payments for your services. Here’s how to improve medical billing processes after insurance collection:

6. Automate Patient Billing

After the insurance portion of the bill is settled, automating patient billing is key to securing timely payments. Automated solutions include:

• Automated statements: Opt for a system that automatically generates and sends patient statements quickly after the insurance claim is processed. These statements can clearly outline the amount covered by insurance, the patient’s remaining responsibility and available payment options.  
• Automated follow-up: Use automated calls and texts to remind patients that their payments are coming up or when they are past due. You can even time these calls and texts based on the statement date and the number of days the payment is past due. A personalized message can also help improve engagement. 
• Automated insurance updater:An insurance updater can quickly capture the correct insurance if the wrong one was billed for services initially. A specialist will send the patient a link they can click to update their insurance. The patient then completes a few data fields and uploads a photo of their insurance card. From there, the specialist validates the insurance and sends it back to you so you can bill the correct insurance, helping you avoid denials and increase revenue collection speed.   

7. Offer Flexible Payment Options

Flexibility and convenience are the names of the game when it comes to payment options. User-friendly methods can improve your collection efficiency and increase provider revenue. Payment options like stored cards, payment plans and self-serve options like online bill pay each appeal to a variety of patients, so you may consider offering them all.  

Any of these digital payment options can make it easier for patients to pay their remaining balance after insurance has paid its share:

• Patient self-payment platform: An integrated patient payment portal gives patients easy, anytime access to billing statements, making it a seamless way to make payments and get reimbursed on time.
• Mobile pay: A mobile pay solution lets patients pay on their phone or where it’s most convenient, meaning more engagement and more revenue.
• Text to pay: A text-to-pay option will send real-time SMS texts to patients, where they can pay their out-of-pocket costs in seconds.
• Photo capture bill payments: An integrated photo capture bill pay lets patients take a picture of their bill on their phone’s camera and pay instantly.
• QR-enabled statements: Send a customized electronic or print statement with a patient-specific QR code Patients can quickly scan the code and make a payment in seconds.

Offer personal support through live chat, phone or email when a patient has a question about their out-of-pocket costs or needs to make a payment. Patient support specialists can answer questions about bills and make the payment process so much easier for patients.

8. Know When to Outsource

Managing patient payments after insurance claims are processed can be time-consuming for a number of reasons, such as outdated billing processes, not being able to update claims quickly enough or not having enough staff to follow up with patients who have outstanding balances. Consider outsourcing this specific aspect of your billing cycle to specialists.

Medical billing specialists have expertise in handling patient billing inquiries, payment processing and follow-up on outstanding balances after insurance has paid. This is all while keeping your practice in accordance with the latest health care laws and regulations. 

Patient payment outsourcing allows your internal staff to handle the timely, complex aspects of patient billing such as appeals and refiling claims while a vendor’s resources can take care of patient billing tasks such as taking patient calls.

9. Leverage Personalized Patient Support

Medical bills can be confusing, and when patients can’t understand their remaining balance after insurance, you might end up with delayed payments or even nonpayments. Leveraging personalized patient support can help. This includes live phone support, email, text or chat, where specialists help patients understand their post-insurance responsibility and payment options.

With this level of service, patients can better understand their bills after insurance has covered its share and choose the best payment method for their needs. In turn, you can increase your payment rates. When you combine personalized support with user-friendly payment options, you can create a better patient experience and a healthier revenue cycle.

10. Harness the Power of Data and Technology 

Aside from digital payment options, there are numerous other ways you can use technology to improve self-pay and post-insurance patient payments. For example, data analytics can help you understand how patients prefer to pay their outstanding balance, whether it’s online, by phone or through a payment plan.

You can then decide the best channel to reach each patient, whether it’s text reminders, email notifications or personalized phone calls. That way, you know your patients are getting the right messages at the right times, reminding them of their outstanding balance and offering convenient payment options.

Increase Medical Billing Efficiency With Millennia

Increasing medical billing efficiency can help your practice receive the payments it’s owed, and Millennia makes it easy to receive post-insurance payments from patients. Our comprehensive patient payment solution enhances the patient journey while helping you collect your patient balances that would otherwise go to bad debt.

Millennia boosts average patient collections by 100% for our customers. Partner with us to increase digital engagement with patients, collect more revenue and improve the patient journey, all while enhancing your practice’s medical billing efficiency. Request a consultation today!

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