The main objective of your radiology practice is to provide quality imaging services and procedures to your patients. Providing quality imaging services requires you to build an efficient and well-trained team- from imaging technicians, administrative staff members to radiology equipment, etc. The entire infrastructure of your radiology center depends on the total amount of revenue that your practice generates.
Most radiology services are covered by medical insurance and the reimbursement amount received from the federal and private insurance organizations. Therefore, to ensure a healthy radiology practice, your secondary objective must be ensuring a healthy radiology billing structure.
To streamline a perfect radiology billing environment, you should always follow the tips mentioned below.
Tips to streamline robust radiology revenue cycle management services:
1) Establish an efficient process:
To make your claim submission process more efficient, you must implement a step-by-step process. It would be a good idea to draft a checklist of all the critical steps including patient information and billing for your administrative team so that they can follow it properly. This checklist of form allows your team to avoid billing errors that cause claim denials, payment delays and poor cash flow.
2) Update the fee schedule:
Review the fee schedule every 6 to 12 months before renewing your insurance contract. Always check the claimed fees against the standard allowed rates to ensure you are collecting the correct amounts and receiving the right reimbursements.
3) Accurate coding:
When you bill for services, you use codes to represent the diagnosis, procedures, and services provided. These codes are crucial for accurate billing. Mistakes can happen, like using vague diagnoses, incorrect codes, missing codes, upcoding, or undercoding. These errors can lead to delays, denials, or reduced payments. Make sure the person handling coding and billing has strong medical knowledge and is skilled at accurately referencing patient information and medical codes.
4) Efficient claim management:
Insurance companies have strict rules for reviewing claims. Any mistake in patient or provider information, coding and documentation can be the causes of claim denials. Always double-check your claims before you submit them to avoid wasting time and effort on edits and resubmissions.
5) Implement a denial management plan:
If your claim has coding errors, an incorrect insurance number, or a terminated patient policy, it will be rejected. Insurance companies follow strict rules and many claims are rejected due to mistakes in patient or provider information, coding issues, or missing documentation. To avoid wasting time on edits and resubmissions, always double-check your claims before submitting them.
6) Routine track performance:
Staying updated with changes in healthcare regulations helps improve performance. Keep track of your yearly revenues and understand why they are going up or down. Your team should always stay on top of the most recent coding and billing updates. Regular team meetings to discuss common issues and solutions can save time and ensure everyone is on the same page when changes or problems arise.
7) Work on your profit flow:
To make your practice successful, increasing patient flow is crucial. Focus on providing excellent service and building strong relationships with your patients. This will boost their confidence in you, leading to more follow-up visits and referrals.
8) Focus on patient collection:
It is always important to educate your patients about their potential out-of-pocket expenses. You must clearly define your payment expectations, terms and conditions and modes of payments before providing them with the clinical services.
Opt for one of the best radiology billing outsourcing companies:
If you have a team of amateur billing staff, your practice can see frequent claim denial and poor cash flow. Novice in-house staff members often lack adequate radiology billing knowledge. By outsourcing your medical coding and billing to specialized companies, you’ll get accurate and timely claims filing. They will handle denied and rejected claims, use the latest tools and regulations, and save you time and labor costs. With a billing partner like Sunknowledge handling this, you can focus entirely on patient care.
As one of the leading radiology billing company in the nation, Sunknowledge has streamlined the perfect revenue cycle management processes for hundreds of radiologists across the nation. To know more about their radiology billing process or any customized plan, contact one of their billing experts today.
