Six Mistakes That Could Be Complicating Medical Billing Tasks For Your Company

Handling medical billing tasks is a big job for companies having to track medical expenses and submit claims to health insurance companies. Everything you can do to streamline your medical billing processes could be enormously beneficial to your organization.

You may be making some mistakes that complicate medical billing tasks. The following are six mistakes to avoid to improve medical billing processes for your company. 

1. Not automating where possible

There are many parts of medical billing processes that can be automated. Tasks that you might be able to automate include filing basic claims and sending out payment reminders. Automation frees up your staff members to focus on other tasks and avoid repetitive, mindless work. 

2. Failing to update patient files when necessary

Avoid developing medical billing processes that make it easy to overlook important updates to patient files. Failing to update patient files repeatedly will lead to accuracy issues.

Train your staff members to verify existing information on file during interactions with patients. If any demographics or details have changed in a patient's file, the changes need to be entered into files immediately. 

3. Continuing to submit claims on paper rather than electronically

Surprisingly, there are still a lot of companies out there submitting claims by paper rather than electronically. It's definitely time to start taking advantage of electronic processes.

It's far more efficient to submit claims electronically. Also, it's easier to track claims that have been submitted electronically than it is to track claims submitted by paper. 

4. Letting claims that need to be filed build up

Don't get into the bad habit of letting a lot of claims build up before you finally submit them. This can leave staff members feeling overwhelmed and behind in their work.

Try to submit claims immediately or at least on a daily basis to avoid a buildup of claims.

5. Losing track of claims that are unpaid

Tracking every single claim denial and responding to it appropriately is important. Think of denials as learning opportunities for your staff members. Make sure that staff members figure out the reason behind every denial. Label denials according to denial codes and focus on your denial rate. 

If your denial rate is higher than expected over a given period of time, it's important to find out why it has gone up and to adjust processes to avoid future denials wherever possible. 

6. Double-checking charges

Accuracy is very important when it comes to documenting all of your charges. Overlooking charges means that you fail to collect payments.

Make sure that you have a coding professional or a third party double check all of your charges so that you know you're not overlooking payments that are due to your company. 

For more information, contact a medical billing service.