Steps You Can Take To Reduce Claims Rejections & Medical Billing Denials
If you own a medical practice, you probably hear “Claim rejected” often. It’s quite difficult for healthcare practitioners to deal with medical billing denials. Increasing your medical billing staff isn’t going to work here if you think it saves your time and enhances your cash flow. Instead, you have to take some other measures in place to end such difficulties. So whatever you require to lower the claim denials and medical billing rejections is included in this article. We’ve highlighted a few steps you can take to minimize the rejection of claims and medical billing denials.
Here We Go:
What Do You Mean By Claim Rejection & Medical Billing Denial?
Before the processing of claims, it is likely to get rejected, and faulty data is most frequently to blame for this. In contrast, a claim that has been examined and determined to be unpayable is subject to claim denial. Simply put, rejection usually occurs when a claim is submitted to a payer with incorrect or missing data.
It is advantageous to keep a watch out for the most elementary errors that might result in denials for any small practice. This blog goes into detail about some of these errors:
Missing Information: Even a small amount of information, like the patient insurance ID number or the date of treatment, may result in claim denials and payment delays. Therefore, make sure you have double-checked that one covers all the fields before submitting any claim forms. It is your responsibility to double-check everything before sending the claim to the payer.
Incorrectly Assigned Codes: A medical claim must contain a suitable code that accurately defines the diagnosis and the treatments provided in that specific case so the payer pays the claim timely. You can go with the support of certified coders who know the necessary code with the highest level of specificity to prevent any major hiccups.
Allowing coders to collaborate closely with physicians can also be advantageous because it provides them the freedom to access every last bit of data directly for the doctor and eliminates the need for guesswork in this process.
Filing Deadline Is Not Met: Even if all of the information on a claim is valid and comprehensive, healthcare facilities must follow payer deadlines to avoid the risk of getting a claim refused. Therefore, be sure to maintain track of each payer’s filing due schedule and file claims before the deadline. Consider hiring a professional if you don’t have the time or resources to effectively handle claim submissions, resubmissions, appeals, and denials.
How To Avoid Claims Rejections & Medical Billing Denials?
Healthcare professionals concentrate on two things: giving their patients the best treatment possible and get the best possible compensation. It is challenging to get timely and complete refunds when claims are denied. To avoid denials, which can be time-consuming and expensive, you will need more staff. If your billing department must spend time examining and resubmitting claims, productivity may suffer.
What A Claim Denial Can Do?
Denial of a claim can harm your business since it affects cash flow, delays payment for your services, and interferes with team productivity. Patients may have to wait longer for appropriate care as a result of billing errors and mistakes.
Denials of medical billing are frustrating for healthcare professionals. These rejections reduce your sales and hurt your bottom line. Due to the time and effort required to process it repeatedly, the cash flow gets reduce. Therefore, medical practitioners must make sure that their medical billing is accurate.
Follow Up On Each Claim
You must make sure that is no loss of claims in your practice management system. Keep close track of every one of your claims. If you notice any kind of disruption, you should put in place an integrated process to monitor claims throughout the entire revenue cycle. The reason is that sometime claims can’t handle in the way as they should be, and many of them get overlooked. Additionally, spend money on technology that enables employees to work more efficiently by performing scrubbing, submitting claims, and monitoring them.
Identify The “Why” Behind Your Claim Denials
Without knowing the reasons behind the rejection of claims, it is impossible to reduce your denial rate. Review all of your claim denial notices from a specific period, such as two or six months. This helps you to determine the relevant causes of such denials. The most frequent causes of claim denials include incorrect patient registrations, missing verification, or identifications, as well as improper treatment or diagnosis codes.
Be On Time With Your Follow-Up
Most medical practices do not even try to take follow-ups on the denied claims. If you are not a part of this group, it is your job to save insurance companies money. Depending on which payer denied it, one can go with the re-submission of claims within a certain time frame after correction.
Make it a point to follow up on every refusal case during the following 5 to 10 days. By doing so, billing department may submit the amended or appealed claims as soon as possible, if necessary.
Automated Eligibility Verification
Most medical facilities reject or refuse patients because they are ineligible. Despite this, medical practices still conduct eligibility checks in an unorganized manner. Your medical practice and the patients you serve will suffer if you don’t verify the patient’s eligibility. To avoid this, you can hire a trustworthy medical billing business to handle the verification and other revenue cycle operations so they can do it effectively and professionally.
Check Into The Remittance Processes
Do you invest a lot of time in making sure your billing process incorporates the appropriate data from remittances? When do your coding and billing teams update their data to reflect the most recent technology? You cannot avoid the claim denial until you are aware of it. If you do so, you will likely lose opportunities to resubmit claims.
The Final Word!
Many healthcare facilities lack the expertise to manage denials in the most effective manner. It happens especially in the age of constantly changing rules and regulations. That’s where outsourcing revenue cycle management to experts can prove to be the most profitable alternative. A top medical billing company in the USA with the right expertise can help you easily identify root causes of claim denials and ensure you remain ahead of the game.
