Ways to prevent AR days over 90!

Posted by Ecareindia on February 22nd, 2014

Account receivable management has always been an exigent task for most of the US healthcare entities. Keeping the AR days below 90 days has been the basic ‘rule of thumb’ of medical claims processing for several years now. However, only very small segment of healthcare entities have been successful in keeping their AR days below the borderline of 90 days. The present day situation clearly showcases that most healthcare entities are struggling to keep their AR days even below 120 days. To keep any healthcare entity financially healthy, maintaining the AR days below 90 days is crucial. There are several ways to accomplish this goal and these are discussed below:

Proficient Billing Software: The incorporation of high-quality EHR and medical billing software directly leads to accurate medical billing and coding, which is one of the best ways of account receivable management. Effortless note-making, user-friendly documentation capabilities, and automated payment posting are some of the best qualities of ideal EHR and billing software. Medical billing AR follow-up will become easy for those healthcare entities that have good billing software incorporated in their practice. Preventing the Denial is always better than fixing one as it improves and expedites cash flow.

Timely Filing: The next step through which AR can be kept to a minimum is timely filing of claims. Medical billing AR follow-up can be reduced if claims are submitted to the Payers within the TFL (Timely Filing Limit). Each Payer has its own predetermined TFL, which may be set as short as 30 days or as long as 2 years. Healthcare entities should pay more attention to such details before filing claims for successful account receivable and denial management. Even re-filing of denied claims and sending Appeals have their own TFL and this should be strictly followed to reduce AR.

Top-notch Reporting Qualities: Reports play a major role in successful account receivable and denial management. EDI reports are a direct proof to claims submission and widely help in tracking their status. Therefore, claims rejected at the clearinghouse can be easily tracked through such reports. With the help of the ATB (Aged Trial Balance) report, one can easily follow-up on unpaid claims, as it provides an in-depth view of the outstanding amount due. Another useful report that helps in keeping AR days below 90 is the Aging AR report. It determines the medical billing performance by measuring the DRO (Days in Receivables Outstanding), which should be in the range of 60 to 90.

Diligent AR Follow-up: Medical billing AR follow-up must be performed diligently to keep AR days under control. Cleaning up the backlogs, improving the claims first-pass ratio, performing a root-cause analysis for claim denial, deciding upon the right global resolution, taking claim-denial preventive measures and following best industry practices are a few qualities to good medical billing AR follow up and denial management.

e-Care is a highly-experienced offshore medical billing company that does all of the items discussed above. Get help from this renowned company to keep your AR days below 90!

About e-Care India:

e-Care India is one of the renowned medical billing companies in India that promises the above mentioned benefits with total customer satisfaction. With 14 years of experience in the industry, e-Care’s 3 offshore medical billing delivery centers have been providing end-to-end healthcare outsourcing services seamlessly to its clients. To know more about e-Care and its services, log on to www.ecareindia.com.

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Ecareindia
Joined: June 20th, 2011
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