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3 easy tips to improve your practice's revenue

By: Brian Gennusa | August 18th, 2015

3 easy tips to improve your practice's revenue Blog Feature
 

How does your medical practice deal with its revenue cycle management? Working with the flow of money into and out of a practice is as important as providing proper care to patients. Without the funds, after all, a practice ceases to function. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways that organizations can improve their relationship with their revenue. Many groups take too long to collect, allow too many write-offs, or use technology that is unoptimized for collections. Some have a very high claim rate denial or fail to follow up on denied claims. Finding out how a given practice can improve its financial situation requires knowing exactly how it is failing to capitalize on available opportunities.

"Automated emails, telephone messages and texting services are all available."

Automation and technical skill in receiving payments
One way that practices can get the money they need is to use automated payment reminders. Setting up an emailing system to mail reminder notices to patients and other payers at certain checkpoints can dramatically increase the rate at which payment is offered. Using an automated system prevents user error from being a factor in receiving payment. No matter who goes out sick or winds up not coming in to the office, payers will receive their reminder invoices thanks to those automated emails, which makes a different in the long term. 

When working with automated reminders there are a couple of different options that organizations have. Automated emails, telephone messages and texting services are all available. Depending on the demographics of a specific practice, some of these methods may be more effective than others. Dermatology practices may find that older clients prefer to receive automated phone reminders, whereas younger clients would rather receive texts or emails.

An email with adollar sign over it and a hand holding the email.

Ensure your practice is ICD-10 ready

Another way to boost the income of a medical practice is to make sure that new ICD-10 codes are in-place before the upcoming change on Oct. 1. Electronic medical records that have been programmed to automatically work with ICD-10 can be a lifesaver for practices in the coming months. Having the foresight to make sure that a group's medical billing software is already set up to go through the change smoothly can be incredibly important. Essentially, this is about mitigating the potential for revenue loss that may come over the next couple months as organizations learn to work with the new coding syste

Offer convenient options

Make sure that patients have the opportunity to pay through convenient transactions. Duplicating data entry can lead to a burdensome process for clients that may make it difficult for them to pay. Instead, give them opportunities to pay for services through patient portals, with which they can review their information. It is fairly easy to set up an interoperable EMR system that connects through to an optional website designed to help patients get their data. Offering better, more reliable options to pay for clients will make the overall process of offering care easier for everyone involved, including physicians and non-clinical staff.