How To Reduce A/R Days During The Medical Billing Process
Healthcare is a business built on passion. You have to be passionate about the ability to heal others and help them on the path out of sickness. You have to be passionate about making sure that each patient you see feels that they have a partner in their health care and not just a robot. You have to be passionate about the area that you work in because these are the same people that you will see at the store, or at the movies. As a medical provider, you aren’t on an island; you’re a member of the community.
But for all the passion that a health care professional can have for their chosen path, they also have to make sure that the practice they are in – no matter the size – is also generating enough revenue to stay in business. That is why having a medical biller to keep the accounts receivable days as low as possible is imperative for any healthcare practice.
Accounts receivables is a term used to describe revenue generated that’s not yet been collected. To ensure cash flow is continuous, your medical office has the responsibility to maximize its revenue potential. But this is often easier said than done. In this blog post, we talk about accounts receivable and what you can do to speed up the process. Keep reading to learn more.
How Do Accounts Receivable Days Get Computed?
To get days in accounts receivable, take your average daily charge for the past six months and divide it by the number of days in those six months. Then divide the total accounts receivable by the average daily charge.
Your math should look something like this:
Accounts Receivable = Average Daily Charge (past 6 mo.) / Days in the Same 6 Month Period
Then:
Total Accounts Receivable / Average Daily Charge
If you have a high-performing medical billing department, you should be able to have A/R days of 30 or less. An average department averages A/R in 40-50 days, while 60 days or more is considered underperforming.
What is the Average Length of Time That It Takes To Get Your Money Back After a Patient Leaves Your Care?
The national average for primary care is around 36 days, while for urgent care payments range anywhere from 20 days to 40 days. The average payment receivable days for surgical care is 32 and pediatric practices average about the same.
Why Are Accounts Receivable Days Important?
You want to make sure that your patients stay healthy and get better, but you are also running a business that needs to have a strong profit margin to maintain your level of staffing and other things. That’s where A/R days come in. The A/R days are a metric that measures the length of time between a patient being discharged from your care and when the payment comes in. Your goal should be to make sure that the length of time is short as possible. One thing to track as part of A/R days is your payer mix. You should easily be able to determine which payers cut a check sooner than others.
What Else Should I Know?
In addition to keeping the financial stability of your practice intact, having A/R follow up allows you to make sure that you never have claims that go missing. That is one of the reasons why you should consider working with Med USA. When you partner with us, it’s easier to collect your revenue. Here’s how we help:
- 98 percent of the charts close the same day.
- Credit balances are reviewed every month.
- Until there is a zero balance, we consistently send out statements to make sure payment is made in full.
- Payments are deposited directly into your bank account
- Practices that work with Med USA see a 40 percent decrease in accounts receivable days.
Get in touch with us today and we will give you even more detailed information on how we helped one multi-specialty medical group increase their revenue by 30% each visit and decreased that number by 40%.
As a health care Revenue Cycle Management company with our own best-in-class accounts receivable standards, we understand the relationship between getting work done and focusing too much on the accounts receivable process. Staying on top of regulations and their application to your practice can feel like a time-consuming process with little reward.
Customizing services to the client’s needs is the reason all of us at Med USA continue to successfully provide RCM services to provider groups of various size and geography. We learned long ago if you only offer one solution, it may not be the right one. That is why we have tailored services to each type of practice. Over nearly four decades of experience, Med USA has developed effective, functional processes that work for us. Visit our website and find out how our accounts receivable work will put your concerns to rest.
