Collect All Your Overdue Payments With AR Follow Up
How Does AR Follow Up Work?
AR Follow-Up holds significant importance for any medical practice. Nowadays an overdue payment is one of the biggest financial problems for a health care service provider.
An account receivable team is very important for every health care service provider to track all the overdue payments. After the initial assessment, the follow-up team analyzes the cause of overdue payments and then operates to collect the revenues.
It’s important for a medical service provider to manage its account receivable and collect all the pending amounts for a better RCM.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of an AR follow up to efficiently collect all your overdue payments. Let’s have a look!
How Does AR Follow-Up Work?
AR follow-up is conducted in an organized manner to ensure maximum reimbursement.
Here are the steps in which the AR follow-up is conducted.
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Initial Assessment:
The very first step is to take an assessment of some aging accounts. Tracking the account which is underpaid. Reviewing the policy of insurance companies and adjusting the claim is also part of this initial assessment.
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Analyzing:
In this second phase, the follow-up team analyzes the claims which they marked unpaid or underpaid. Analyzing the reason behind those overdue payments and responding in an effective manner fall into this category.
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Collection:
The last part consists of collecting the payment after finalizing all the assessments from the issued claims. In this step, claims that fall within the filling limit of the insurance companies should be refilled. For this purpose, proper validation of all the billing information is required.
Claims that require additional documentation are underpaid most of the time, providing the additional documentation for collection is also part of this step. After the completion of payment posting details, the Patient’s bills are generated for the follow-up process.
Importance of AR Follow-Up
To collect all the pending payments your practice must possess a dedicated team who track the accounts receivable regularly. They also track denial claims to ensure maximum reimbursement.
Below are some of the reasons which highlight the importance of AR follow-up.
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Gives Your Practice Financial Stability
It’s essential for every medical service provider to maintain a stable cash flow for running their operations. If a hospital is in any financial loss then it becomes very tough for them to operate.
An AR follow-up team gives them financial stability by tracking those accounts which are not paid yet and following them to get reimbursement. Having a constant flow of revenues gives the practice financial stability.
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Helps In Overcoming The Outstanding Account Receivable:
AR follow also works in reducing the time to get paid. Your practice is in a serious financial loss because you failed to track the patients who have not been paid yet. If your practice is consistently ignoring those patients, then your account receivable will expand.
Putting the extra financial burden on your practice. AR follow-up team is working on tracking those accounts to recover all the overdue payments.
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Missing Claims:
One of the reasons behind late payment is sometimes the claim went missing and your practice is unaware about it, waiting to get the payment. Until you came to know that your submitted claim has been lost.
There might be many reasons behind it like submission of claim manually like in the paper form rather than submitting electronically. Whatever the reason is, your AR follow-up team can easily track those missing claims on time and resubmit another claim to save your practice from late payment.
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Claim Denial Management:
One of the biggest reasons behind an outstanding account receivable is a high ratio of claim denial. The reason might be a coding error or late claim submission or anything. Your AR follow-up team can send them a reclaim after making corrections in the required documentation.
It’s best to call the insurance company to ask the reason behind the denial management rather than wait for their Email. A timely contact and correction brighten the chances of getting paid without any delay.
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Resolving Pending Claims:
Sometimes your submitted claims require additional information to approve. These claims will not be approved until you provide additional information to the insurance companies and most of the time you receive late reminders from the insurance companies for additional information.
Your AR follow-up team can reduce this duration by following up on those claims and providing additional information without wasting any time.
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Patient Follow Up:
While some services are excluded from the agreement of insurance companies, then patients are liable to pay for those services. Many of the time patients are unaware of the coverage of their health insurance.
Firstly your practice should tell them in the initial assessment that these services are not covered by your insurance companies and further if they forget to pay, so your AR follow up team can send them invoices and reminders to pay for the services they acquired during their stay in the hospital.
Division of Account Receivable Team
Account receivable follow-up is not an easy task. After all, tacking the aging account, analyzing the reasons behind payment delays, and a thorough assessment of all the claims is not simple as it looks.
After all this grinding, the service providers are able to get reimbursement from the ISP. Usually, the account receivable team is divided into two sections:
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Account Receivable Analytics:
The account receivable analytics team is required to do all the analytic work. Like tracking denied claims, aging accounts, and the reason behind the overdue payments.
They also prepare additional documentation for the insurance companies and if any kind of error occurs they are responsible for correcting it and resubmitting the claim.
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Account Receivable Follow up:
The account receivable follow-up team is instructed to follow the claim. This team is in constant touch with insurance companies, patients, and the health care unit.
They send reminders to the patient for the payment. They also took necessary actions based on the analysis of the account receivable analytic team.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your AR Follow-Up Team
Medical billing is a complex process. Many of the health care systems lose an enormous amount of revenue every year. While it is a complex process, Having a dedicated team managing the AR follow-up is much more complex.
In many health care systems, these activities are done by their own medical staff. Which are not always aware of handling the billing activities that result in low revenue collection and a high probability of errors.
The medical billing service providers are well aware of the follow-up procedures. Their team can better analyze the payment delay.
By providing services to multiple health care units, they are well aware of some of the common errors that occur in the billing process. They are also familiar with the changing regulations in the health care system. Also, they understand the insurance policies of various ISPs so they can better follow up with them.
Outsourcing your account receivable follow-up team can save your precious time. The medical billing service providers possess an experienced team that can help you with a timely follow-up
For all of your claims, reduce the costs and save your time from hiring an in-house staff. Moreover, the chances of errors are also significantly reduced when you opt for outsourcing.
