With health systems, medical centers, hospitals, and physician practices facing dismally low reimbursement figures and increasing risk and margin pressures breathing down their necks improving revenue are of paramount importance. Revenue cycle management experts are advocating improvements and the efficient management of accounts receivable as well as charge capture, coding, processing of claims, secondary billing, insurance follow-up, and self-pay collections.
There are several cash flow opportunities to seize
As far as DME billing services are concerned it’s spotting reimbursement opportunities that matter as they can result in immediate returns with the negligible cost involved. This is probably the first step towards achieving the working order of your revenue cycle while treading the path of value-based care. However, the trick lies in uncovering particular areas that are a bane to financial performance in healthcare. Although this not an easy task, proper expertise and benchmarking techniques can help achieve uncovering such areas.
Team up with experts to jointly manage your revenue cycle
DME billing can end up with better financial figures when chief financial officers team up with experts while administering important revenue cycle management practices and turn operationally efficient, thus improving financial performance. Health systems also need to strive to take head-on professional revenue cycle responsibilities and seek support for managing coding, billing, and technology platforms wherever required.
Analysis of end-to-end revenue cycle management
Many a healthcare organization is on a constant struggle to improve the figures of revenue cycle operations. You need to implement end-to-end revenue cycle management as well as medical billing services. Durable medical equipment billing services need to implement domain expertise in hospitals as well as physician billing and claims management along with end-to-end revenue cycle management that will help in reducing operational costs and increase cash flow rapidly.
It would do well for DME billing companies to work with their teams to thoroughly analyze their operational needs and compare their performance with benchmarks set by industry leaders before creating a plan to go forward in optimizing revenue cycle operations. They need to delve into ways and means to implement best practices in revenue cycle management across the healthcare systems and various information systems as well. DME billing services providers need to realize that there can be no short cut or one-stop solution that can address the multiple challenges faced by hospitals and physicians in a healthcare environment that has become much more dynamic today. In their pursuit of perfection, the primary focus on quality patient care should never be ignored or forgotten.
They need to focus more on:
- More efficient document management that includes indexing and sorting, focus on payment details, correspondence, etc
- Medicare DME that focuses on effective pre-order management solutions that help review Medicare eligibility, patient responsibility, co-pays collections, expert financial counseling, and validation and completion of orders.
- DME billing solutions and claim production that includes HCFA 1500 and ICD -10, HIPAA 5010 compliant operations for reviewing electronic claims, dispatching to payers (837P), hard copy billing, etc
- Updating Accounts Receivables solutions and prompt insurance follow-up, managing denials efficiently(835), post-auditing of refunds, and self-pay collections
- Focus on customer support for patients 24/7 and effective outbound sales campaigns that can help boost revenues.
In spite of consistent growth, durable medical equipment billing is plagued with challenges like persistent complexity in insurance benefits and claims. The shift is towards patient-driven payment models impacting revenues directly, which in turn tell on the cash flows and margins. Hence the focus needs to be on designing, transforming, and running workable revenue cycle management processes that help achieve efficient collections and plug revenue leakage.