How to Boost Accounts Receivable Payments for ENT Practices

Keeping a steady cash flow is an important part of running a medical practice. Just like any other business, your practice or clinic needs to make accounts receivable improvements that will help to increase medical payments from patients and insurance companies alike. One of the best ways to make improvements is to first figure out where you are and what exactly you are doing. ENT practice reporting for medical billing and coding can be a huge asset. Having comprehensive and custom reports that detail your current billing practices can provide you with all of the information you need to make huge strides toward boosting payments.

Step One: Patient Information
The more that you know about your patients, the easier it will be to increase medical payments and collections. Your front desk staff is probably well versed at collecting contact information and insurance details from new patients, but how are they at collecting this information from existing patients when they schedule a visit? Some information can be gathered over the phone, but the best approach by far is to have them validate their personal information and insurance card at each and every visit. It may seem tedious, but it is essential to making accounts receivable improvements. Make sure your staff updates the new data into the computer immediately.

Step Two: Identify Valuable Data
The next thing that you need to do to boost your medical billing and coding is to take a look at all of the data you have collected from patients and review it to see what is important. You can get rid of information that is not valuable to your ENT practice reporting and get rid of patient data for patients who have not come in for a visit for many years. This will help you to keep your focus on what is relevant and accurate for your practice. You might be wasting valuable resources by continuing to bill a patient that has since deceased or could be trying to collect on a patient who visited the area once and won’t be back again. Cut your losses and put your energy into collecting from existing, recurring and future patients.

Step Three: Increase Collections Efforts
One way that practices are losing out on cash flow is by not aggressively collecting from existing patients. Your ENT practice reporting can reveal to you bad habits in this area. Most medical offices are now “cracking down” on patients who owe balances both large and small by ensuring that they make a payment before they are seen. Allowing your patients to accumulate large balances does not do them any favors. Making accounts receivable improvements in this area will not just increase medical payments, but will also help your practice to run more smoothly.

Step Four: Post a Payment Policy
To help your staff collect payments faster and easier, it helps to post a payment policy in your lobby, on your website, and send one out to patients via email, newsletter or post mail. Some of the policy ideas that you can use to improve medical billing and coding payments include developing a system where the front desk staff checks existing balances for the next day’s appointments so they can remind patients when they call to remind them about their appointment, as well as stating that payment is due before they can be seen again. Train your staff to be firm but fair with regard to payment requirements, bringing in a manager for the billing department if payment is refused. Make sure your policies are clear and understandable, taking time to go over them with patients, as needed, whenever they change.

Use Smart Data from ENT Marks
The best way to get a handle on your current medical billing and coding successes and failures to help you make accounts receivable improvements, is to contact a team to provide you with ENT practice reporting and analysis. You can increase medical payments to improve your bottom line, but it is important to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Failing to collect and analyze data that can help your practice is irresponsible. Contact ENT Marks today via phone or by using our online contact form, to learn more about what we can do to help you make viable improvements to the way you do business.