Outsourcing Revenue Cycle Management in 2021: Best Practices

Every practice needs well-oiled Revenue Cycle Management to grow and succeed. Your revenue cycle stretches through every component of your practice. While it is composed of every part of the billing process, from the first encounter to the time of payment, its impact reaches much farther. A healthy revenue cycle enables a provider to grow the size of their organization, stay up to date with the latest technology, and keep helping patients who need their care and attention. A poor RCM function will leave a practice feeling overwhelmed, stunted, and frustrated until the day they close their doors for the last time. So, what can a provider do to guarantee they are optimizing their RCM? Outsourcing to a quality vendor of RCM services might be the answer. Below are the best practices for outsourcing Revenue Cycle Management in 2021.

What Is Included in Revenue Cycle Management?

The revenue cycle starts at the point of first contact and flows through every process until the payment is collected either from the payer or the patient. Revenue Cycle Management includes the collection of payments, the filing and submission of claims, the management of denials, how much time an account spends in A/R, and more.

What Can Outsourcing Do to Improve RCM?

Manage Claims

Outsourcing revenue cycle management services to a qualified vendor can help your practice optimize claims management tasks like the filing and submission of claims to billers for reimbursement. The complexity of the medical billing process requires the special attention of experts in order to yield the best results. A vendor of services will scrub each of your claims to ensure each one is structured with the best-fitted code, optimizing its chance at approval from the vendor. They will then track the claim all the way through reimbursement to make sure your practice earns an on-time payment.

Respond to Denials

While outsourcing revenue cycle management services will drastically decrease your practice’s denials, they sometimes still happen. When a claim is denied, how your office handles that denial is of vital importance. If the claim is resubmitted promptly enough, the provider can still earn a quick payment. An RCM services partner will know the moment a denial happens and respond quickly to make sure your practice does not let a payment slip through the cracks.

Collect Difficult Patient Payments

If a service is not covered by a patient’s insurance and they are responsible for payment, collecting that payment can be extremely difficult. The good news is that a revenue cycle management partner can help. A team of expert billers will work as an extension of your practice to optimize and increase patient payments. They will offer empathy, compassion, and patience to patients that need it. They will explain, in detail, what options your patients have when it comes to their medical expenses and encourage them to make a payment that is comfortable to them.

Streamline Reimbursement

By working with patients to collect difficult payments, increase clean claims, and respond quickly to denials, a revenue cycle management partner will streamline your reimbursements and payments. They will minimize errors in your billing process, identify areas that need attention, and help your patients feel comfortable making their payments.

To learn more about a revenue cycle management services partner, click here.