Every business needs revenue to operate, and medical practices are no different. While you always want your prime focus to be on patient care and outcomes, without an eye to the financials, your ability to provide that care can be negatively impacted. Providers have enough to worry about; ensuring correct coding and billing and that you’ve received the payments you’re due, shouldn’t be among those concerns. Luckily, with the best RCM solutions you can keep your practice financially healthy in a streamlined way that doesn’t monopolize your time.
What is RCM and Why Is It Important?
RCM, or revenue cycle management, refers to the financial process used by practices to track patient care and receive reimbursement. The revenue cycle itself is made up of many steps:
- Preregistration: Collecting patient information before their appointment time, typically including limited demographic information and insurance coverage
- Registration: Collecting the remainder of the patient’s information to establish a complete record and meet all requirements for billing
- Coding: Accurately coding procedures and diagnoses
- Charge capture: Translating services rendered into billable charges
- Claim submission: Submitting claims to insurance payers
- Remittance processing: Applying or rejecting payments of claims
- Third-party follow up: Working to collect payments from third-party insurers
- Patient collections: Determining and working to collect on patient responsibilities
While it can be easy to assume that the RCM process begins after the conclusion of a patient’s appointment when the billing process starts, in actuality RCM begins as soon as a patient schedules an appointment.
A healthy RCM process is integral to a practice’s fiscal health. Without a successful revenue cycle, practices can lose out on reimbursement funds, causing financial struggles that can render the organization unable to provide adequate care. By contrast, a streamlined RCM process helps to save both time and money, allowing practices to focus more of their attention on patient care.
4 Best RCM Solutions to Keep Revenue Flowing
With the vital role that RCM plays in keeping your practice running smoothly, it’s important to invest in tools that will help you to ensure that you are getting paid accurately and in a timely manner.
- A strong practice management solution: Choose a solution that features intuitive scheduling, automatic eligibility verification, easy registration, robust billing features, and integrated collection tools for the best results.
- A streamlined EMR: When choosing an EMR solution, look for one that makes documentation easy so that it doesn’t pull from your focus while with patients. At the same time, that documentation must easily allow for the compilation of accurate claims, with an efficient process to go from documentation to coding.
- Mobile payments: Today’s patients are used to paying their bills electronically, so when it comes to collecting patient payments it’s a good idea to offer a convenient way for this to be accomplished.
- A revenue cycle data tool: Unfortunately, insurers don’t always provide reimbursement that’s accurate to what was agreed upon. It’s important to have a tool in your arsenal that enables you to hold payers accountable to paying you adequately.
An efficient, streamlined revenue cycle can be the difference between a practice that struggles and one that thrives. With this in mind, Henry Schein SolutionsHub works diligently to find the best RCM solutions, such as RevOps, a complete revenue cycle data visualization that allows you to hold payers accountable to the reimbursements they’ve agreed to.
For more information or to get started, visit henryscheinsolutionshub.com and talk to a Solutions Consultant today.
