Your Medical Billing Can Be Better in 2009
Written by Carl Mays II on June 26th, 2009
According to many polls, by January 31, 2009 the majority of New Year resolutions will have already been abandoned. This does not mean that it should be a day of mourning, but rather it is the time to take stock of what needs to be done to reach the goals that were set at the end of 2008. It is critical to keep in mind two of the corner stones for achieving any goal:
1. Do not view a minor failure (i.e., you just ate a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream) as final defeat (i.e., Well I might as well stop trying to give up sweets); and
2. Break your goal down into manageable pieces (i.e., I will lose 2 pounds in January; 2 lbs in February versus I will lose 25 pounds this year).
So, this is interesting, but how does it apply to medical billing? Well, if you keep these ideas in mind you can use them to achieve lofty improvements in medical billing performance. How? Start with a powerful and straight forward goal: Make sure your claims are clean before you submit them. This will help your medical billing in several ways:
- This goal forces you to concentrate on the most critical elements of medical billing – gathering the proper information and using it to create a clean claim;
- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as “I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;
- Set backs position you for better performance tomorrow. How? You look at the claims that did not go out the door clean and learn what went wrong. Do you have a problem at the front desk with gathering demographics? Do you have a problem with training your data entry people? Do you have one physician that consistently codes incorrectly? Do you have one payer that really dislikes one of your common procedures?
- Technology can be a powerful ally in achieving this goal. The use of coding tools, automated demographic verification tools and scrubbing claims will eliminate many sources of up-front errors that lead to claim rejections.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Understand where you are starting your journey (what portion of your claims are accepted on first submission);
- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);
- Create a “goal ladder” where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Develop a process for gleaning learning from claims that do not initially clear the clean claim hurdle.
This approach and focus can allow your medical billing efforts to reach new standards of excellence in 2009.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II
Tags: advice, Ask an expert, business, Business and finance, Business services, Business to business, Consulting, entrepreneurship, Goal Setting, how to, Medical Billing, Medical billing services, Medical services, Outsourcing, small business
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