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Revenue management or revenue cycle management is increasingly becoming one of the most vital functions in healthcare industry. For any care provider to stay financially viable, proper planning and management of revenue sources is absolutely essential. In an alternative medicine field like Chiropractic, revenue management underlines the short term and long term operations of the clinic. Every care provider operates on the standard revenue generation cycle of coding, billing and claim settlement for the payers mix. With effective revenue management, costs can be contained, processes can be streamlined and revenue streams can become more responsive and profitable. Revenue management for a chiropractic clinic starts at the time of patient appointment setting and is successfully completed with recovery of accounts receivable. - Managing patient appointments – Loss of time and revenue with canceled patient appointments is a cost head which many chiropractors fail to account for. Since Chiropractics is alternative health care and a chiropractic clinic rarely receives emergency cases, the likelihood of appointment rescheduling is very high. Therefore, to keep track of service hours lost and rescheduled appointments, basic scheduling software can be adopted.
- Recording prognosis and care provided – Medical information has to be recorded and transferred with great care in order to adhere to HIPPA guidelines. Especially when it comes to Chiropractics, most patient complains revolve around incorrect prognosis and inadequate administration of care. To deliver care in a pay for performance model of healthcare, it is important that chiropractors identify codes associated with illnesses, record them in a streamlined database and update patient records from day one.
- Controlling Coding errors – Coding errors are the bane of the entire revenue cycle management in healthcare. A wrongly identified code once fed into the system, eventually leads to claim denials, bad debts and lawsuits even. The key to achieve effective revenue management is via monitoring coding process and data entry. Regular updating of coding changes also ensures lessened errors in this function, improving later profitability.
- Daily, weekly and monthly reports – Periodic monitoring of all care and administrative activities ensure improved efficiency if used properly. Daily reports can identify scheduling fluctuations, thereby preparing the clinic for changes in monthly bottom line. Weekly and monthly reports can help in tracking patient trends and payer mix to plan the short term and long term financial goals of the clinic. Not only can these reports reduce claim denials but also reduce the chances of medical audit.
- Reducing age of Accounts receivable – The earlier an accounts receivable is settled, the greater likelihood of settlement is there. With revenue cycle management, you can keep a track of pending payments and document requirements to close accounts receivable within a stipulated time. Constant follow up with individual customers and insurance carriers is a time consuming task that entails additional resource as well as revenue cycle management. For a chiropractic clinic with more than 30% of revenue reflecting in accounts receivables at any given time improvement in age of accounts receivable can dramatically improve profitability.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com is a billing solution provider that offers expertise of medical billers in specialty medicines along with primary care. While adopting revenue cycle management in your chiropractic clinic can turn out to be a difficult task for your in-house staff, medicalbillersandcoders.com can effectively prepare your practice for this transformation within months.
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