Claim management in every eyecare practice is a challenging piece of running the business. To help ease the hassles of managing claims, many practices enlist help from a clearinghouse solution that allows them to submit, track and manage all their claims from one location. But this still requires your practice to have a knowledgeable biller on staff who can keep up with changing rules and claim denials.
More recently, there has been talk about revenue cycle management services in the eyecare industry. But what exactly is a “revenue cycle management service” and how will it help your practice better manage your claim process and bring in more money from your claim reimbursements? Let’s take a look.
What is Revenue Cycle Management?
Revenue cycle management (RCM) is the process of filing a claim from beginning to end, and an RCM service will help take this workload off of your practice’s hands. Using an RCM service will help your office increase payments and leave you with more time to focus on your patients and less on your claim processes.
Outside of the normal bells and whistles of an RCM service, a few things that are important to look for in a service is one that can submit both vision and medical claims, has a team of experts focused solely in the optometry space, and is flexible enough to work with any practice management system you might already have in place in your office.
Here are a few more ways your practice, and claim reimbursements, will benefit from the help of an RCM service:
Timely Claim Filing: It’s easy for billing managers in an eyecare practice be overworked causing them to fall behind on claims. With an RCM service, you’ll get your claims filed quickly and on time since you won’t be reliant on one person managing this heavy workload.
Rejections Worked Quickly: Claim denials and rejections are inevitable. While you can certainly work on lowering your denial rate, you’re never going to eliminate them 100 percent. With an RCM service, you should look for a team that will work rejections and denials for you, and not just shoot them back, putting the majority of the workload squarely back on your shoulders.
Insight on Important Metrics: In many eyecare practices, it’s hard to crunch the numbers of your claim performance on your own. Having a robust reporting tool that works hand-in-hand with your revenue cycle provider will give you deep insight into your practice’s performance historically and compared to state and national averages.
Imagine being able to sort your claim reports by payer or procedure, and seeing how denial rates average out across various filters. With insights like these you won’t have to rely on gut feelings or a single person telling you how your claims are really performing.
To learn more about RCM and maximizing on your claim processes, download the eBook, How to Make More Money on Claim Reimbursements.