Chiropractors are in dire need of a financial process that is specifically designed to handle the complexity of their practice. The constantly evolving regulations and the requirements that accompany them further complicate chiropractic billing.
More often than not, federal regulations require chiropractors to understand minor changes to the coding convention. This can catch an in-house team off guard leading to mistakes in the medical billing process. Outsourcing the entire process to a team of specialists is the most logical choice for chiropractors to maintain a healthy revenue stream.
Medical billing companies introduce well-designed billing strategies to improve the effectiveness of medical billing. These strategies help practitioners overcome the most common errors related to billing, improving the accuracy of billing data in the process. The following are the top five ways for a chiropractic billing company to improve the quality and efficiency of medical billing:
Track and Monitor Accounts Receivables: Usually medical practices such as a chiropractic clinic lacks the required resources to track outstanding payments effectively. Close to 15% of claims submitted by them go unpaid. This is due to billing errors. By monitoring outstanding claims effectively, chiropractors can avoid these errors and deploy measures to ensure that common billing errors do not repeat themselves.
Improve Accuracy of Medical Coding: Most denied claims originate from errors in patient demographics information. These errors happen right at the preliminary stages where a patient is admitted to the hospital. This shows the need for a more streamlined approach to the maintenance of patient information. The systematic scrubbing of CPT codes and their use as a data validation step helps reduce the errors in the preliminary stages, thereby improving the overall quality of medical billing.
Denied Claims Management: Most small scale chiropractic setups do not have a plan to manage denied claims. They have a standard procedure to file for appeals at best. This is simply not enough for a practitioner to maintain a healthy revenue cycle. Such clinics that rely on a minimalistic approach to RCM need the golden touch of a chiropractic billing company to improve their bottom line, at a lower operational cost.
Data Verification: The standard billing process is made up of many smaller steps that range from charge entry to claims submission. As the CPT codes are verified and claims are prepared, there are many points in the process where patient data such as demographic information, insurance eligibility, and treatment utilization information can be verified. A proactive approach to data verification ensures that the medical data that is sent to the payer from a chiropractor is accurate and complete.
Appeals and Follow up: Health insurance companies have Service Level Agreements (SLA) that they must adhere to. It is possible that due to their unique business challenges, they violate these SLAs. A chiropractic billing company improves the efficiency of medical practices by reminding insurers of appeals and seeking updates on queries about denied claims.
There are many restrictions on chiropractors since their services are so specialized. The services of a chiropractic billing company help them adapt to regulatory changes and reduce the scope for common errors. By just employing the services of such service providers, chiropractors can hope to improve the efficiency and quality of their medical billing process.