Since family practices face many factors that make getting paid more challenging, getting proactive about billing procedures is more important than ever. Being proactive and preventing problems before they occur can help your family practice maximize revenue, ensuring you’re adequately reimbursed so your practice can continue providing quality patient care. Every year, medical providers in the United States leave over 100 billion dollars of uncollected revenue due to billing errors, coding mistakes, and failure to stay current on medical billing rules. Here’s a closer look at the top 5 medical billing strategies you can use proactively to maximize your family practice revenue.
Contact MBC today to speak with one of our specialists about the benefits of outsourced Family Practice Billing management.
Top 5 Medical Billing Strategies to Maximize Family Practice Revenue
1. Review your scheduling practices
You may need to fine-tune the way your appointments are scheduled. If appointments are booked in standard 15-minute increments, you might spend more time waiting for patients than you should. Or if appointments are all booked at the top of the hour (i.e., wave scheduling), your patients might be spending more time waiting for you than they should.
A modified-wave template schedules two 15-minute appointments on the hour, one 15 minutes later, and another 30 minutes after the hour. Typically, there is no appointment 45 minutes after the hour, which allows time for a 30-minute appointment, an extra work-in patient, or time to return phone calls or catch up on documentation. A modified-wave template also helps ensure you’re not behind schedule before you begin. If you start seeing patients at 9 a.m. and one doesn’t arrive on time, chances are the other patient with a 9 a.m. appointment will.
It would be best to consider whether your scheduler gets the right visit type or patient in the right appointment slot. For example, diabetes checks may not require 30 minutes, especially if you have systems to ensure that lab results are available in the chart during the visit. Certain patients will invariably consume the time of two appointments; book them accordingly. You can optimize your scheduling procedures by enabling accessible communication between your scheduler and your clinical staff, for example, by closing their desks.
2. Focus on being efficient
Improving efficiency is truly a game of inches. There are many ways to do it, and none are likely to result in dramatic gains. Still, if they enable you to see two additional patients a day together, the effort can amount to a tremendous increase in revenue. According to the research referenced earlier, high-earning physicians work an average of 56 hours a week, and low-earning physicians work 51 hours a week. However, the high-earners provide 38 more visits per week than their low-earning counterparts (high-earners provide a mean number of 122 visits per week; low-earners offer 84). The high-earners aren’t just working harder; they’re working smarter.
Starting each morning with a 10-minute meeting with critical clinical and office staff members can save you valuable time later. The purpose of the meeting is to look at the day’s schedule, anticipate information needs or exceptional circumstances that may arise during the day, and plan accordingly to prevent slowdowns. Check that lab results, reports from other physicians, discharge paperwork, and so on are in the chart. Identify patient visits that might take longer than scheduled and make adjustments. Talk with your scheduler about times when you can see an extra patient.
3. Delegate work
Delegate work that doesn’t require a physician’s license. Don’t spend time on patient-care-related tasks that don’t need a medical degree. Try to delegate as many administrative tasks as possible while understanding your practice’s operations well. Dictating notes while you’re still in the exam room with the patient can improve your efficiency. Your memory is fresh, and the details are precise. Dictating in the patient’s presence is also a good way of validating the patient’s concerns, cementing your treatment alliance with the patient, and reiterating your instructions. This takes some getting used to, which may not be appropriate in every case.
You don’t have to leave your exam room frequently if you are delegating your work. You can be most productive when you don’t have to leave the exam room to obtain the necessary information or supplies. You can avoid interruptions during patient visits by stocking exam rooms appropriately and implementing daily huddles as described earlier. If 10 times a day you leave the exam room for two minutes to fetch a form or an instrument that you need, you’ve squandered the equivalent of an entire patient visit.
4. Keep multiple revenue streams
It’s essential to realize the extent to which your scope of practice drives your revenue stream and to weigh decisions that would narrow it carefully. Whether performing a specific office procedure, seeing nursing home patients, doing obstetrics, or taking care of patients in the hospital, think of each service as a tributary to your practice’s revenue stream. Give up one of these services, and you’re cutting off part of your revenue stream, which can be difficult to reclaim, particularly once procedural skills or privileges have lapsed.
Try to do every procedure you can comfortably and confidently perform in your setting: skin procedures, joint aspirations and injections, trigger point injections, tendon, and tendon sheath injections, simple- and moderate-complexity fracture care, treadmill stress tests, and an array of hospital procedures. This scope won’t make sense in every practice if you do procedures that your colleagues don’t and invite them to refer their patients to you.
5. Track performance and find areas where you can improve
Since the healthcare landscape continues to change, your family practice needs to change along with it to improve efficiency and maximize revenue. One of the best strategies to keep revenue flowing is to look for ways to enhance your billing procedures. This includes staying informed about changes to medical billing rules and changes in billing and coding protocols, identifying any problem accounts, and tracking pending accounts receivable to see how your family practice’s revenue cycle is performing.
In some cases, outsourcing your billing and coding is one of the best things you can do to improve your practice’s billing and coding procedures to maximize revenue. Billing and coding rules, standards, and procedures are constantly changing, making it easy to miss small details that result in underpayments, denials, and rejections that cost your family practice money and time.
Outsourcing to a company like Medical Billers and Coders (MBC) offers an effective way to regain control over billing and increase revenue. We provide dedicated specialists who are highly trained, and we submit claims quickly, allowing your practice to spend more time focusing on your patients. If you’re interested in outsourcing your medical billing and coding to improve your practice’s revenue, contact us at 888-357-3226 to learn how we can help you.
FAQs
1. Why is proactive billing critical for family practices?
Proactive billing helps prevent issues before they arise, ensuring that your practice is reimbursed correctly and can continue providing quality patient care.
2. How can scheduling improvements increase revenue?
Optimizing scheduling reduces patient wait times and allows for more efficient appointment flow, which can help see more patients each day and boost revenue.
3. What tasks should family practice physicians delegate?
Physicians should delegate administrative tasks and non-medical duties to staff, allowing them to focus on patient care and improve overall practice efficiency.
4. Why is it essential to maintain multiple revenue streams?
Offering a variety of procedures and services helps diversify revenue, ensure a steady income, and reduce dependency on any single service.
5. How can outsourcing billing benefit family practices?
Outsourcing to a specialized billing company like Medical Billers and Coders (MBC) ensures accurate, timely billing, minimizes denials, and boosts revenue.
