How Do I Know If My Health Practice is Healthy?
As a thriving medical practice, one thing that you likely never thought you’d have to do was chase down unpaid medical bills. The reality is all too often medical practices must spend significant time and energy getting paid. This distraction takes time away from a practitioners most important job which is caring for their patients. Thankfully, the professionals at Outsource Receivables have been in the medical billing industry for decades and have a variety of strategies to ensure your practice runs smoothly and that your receivables are manageable, so you can focus on what you do best.
How Do I know if My Practice Needs Help with Medical Billing?
First off you take an inventory of the amount of time you and/or your office staff are spending on all types of medical billing tasks.
This includes, but is not limited to, billing for procedures, tracking down payments, re-filing incorrect claims with insurance, sending late notices, and making follow up calls to past due accounts.
Monitor these types of activities over an extended period-of-time. We suggest a minimum of two weeks to a month. Armed with this kind of data you’ll be able to accurately quantify how many hours in a given week, or month, you can expect to spend on medical billing activities. If you perform this exercise we’re confident you will be surprised with the amount of time you and your team are spending just getting paid.
At this point, we encourage you to “do the math” and determine exactly what medical billing is costing by doing in-house. Is your current return worth what you’re spending? If your 90 day + is more than 20% of overall receivables, it’s not worth what you’re paying and is a good indicator your health care practice is sick.
Accounts/Receivable Greater than 90 Days is a Key Benchmark
Accounts/Receivable greater than 90 days, which is also often referred to as A/R>90 is a key industry benchmark to determine the health of your medical practice. If you have a high percentage of A/R>90, it’s clear you have a real medical billing problem on your hands.
Based on industry data, an A/R>90 in the 15-20% range is average, so if you are much higher than that number, you likely could benefit from working with a medical billing company like Outsource Receivables, Inc. If your accounts/receivable numbers are much lower you should most definitely give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!
Importance of Setting Medical Billing Targets
Are you currently setting medical billing targets for you and your staff? If not, you’ll want to make this change as soon as possible. Setting targets for your employees can be a great motivating factor. Doing this will help keep your office receivables healthy.
Need Help Hitting Your Key Medical Billing Benchmarks?
If you’re unclear about how to track your accounts receivable, or how best to set targets for you and your staff, feel free to reach out to the Outsource Receivables team today. We’ve helped hundreds of medical practices across the country improve their medical billing bottom line by getting the A/R>90 to less than 10%.
To learn more, give us a call today at 877-477-0480. We look forward to working with you soon.