A successful medical practice is one that can effectively generate, track, and collect revenue. In other words, they have a good grasp of their revenue cycle.
This is easier said than done as there are many factors that might prevent a practice from properly managing their revenue cycle.
Let’s look at six ways you can improve your revenue cycle management:
- Simplify Patient Access – This is referring to making sure you patients can easily schedule, reschedule, or even cancel their appointments. If your patients can easily schedule an appointment, then your calendar will most likely be filled. And if a patient cannot make an appointment, you want them to be able to easily reschedule or cancel so you can potentially fill that open slot and not lose out on that revenue.
- Understand Payer Rules – This is essentially referring to reducing the number of denied claims. As we have written about before, denied claims are detrimental to your bottomline. Understanding your payers’ rules will help you keep your denied claims down and keep your revenue cycle going.
- Improve and Clarify Payment Collections – First, you want to make sure that your patients understand your practice’s payment policies. Have them posted and even consider having your patients sign something they understand what these policies mean for them. Second, give your patients multiple options when it comes to pay. With today’s technology patients have a variety of options when it comes to paying for goods and services. You want to remove as many potential barriers as you can.
- Utilize Technology – Speaking of technology, there are several additional ways you can utilize technology to improve your revenue cycle. For scheduling, you can use an online scheduling system that helps you keep your calendar full. For other parts of the revenue cycle there are options that can help automate processes. This can eliminate mistakes while opening up time for your staff to work on other vital tasks.
- Make Sure Staff Is Properly Trained – No matter what direction you choose to go in terms of improving your revenue cycle, making sure your staff is properly trained is key. They must know what to do and when, otherwise you will spend more time, and likely lose revenue, correcting mistakes.
- Consider Outsourcing – It might sound counterintuitive to spend money to save money, but in this instance that might be true. When you factor in the costs of managing your own revenue cycle (employee time, potential issues with patients/payers, and potential loss of revenue), you might see that you will save more money by outsourcing aspects of your revenue cycle management such as billing and coding.
It is important to set your practice up for long term success by ensuring you have a healthy revenue cycle. If it becomes too difficult to generate, track, and collect revenue then you will find it almost impossible to grow your practice. These tactics will help you develop a plan that helps you set your practice up for a successful future.