The recent changes in the US healthcare system, i.e. billing rules and insurance policies, brought a lot of new challenges for lab practitioners. They need help to keep their laboratory billing services optimized. For healthcare practice to succeed, it needs to continue to evolve with a focus on finance and medical performance. As healthcare costs steadily increase, lab technicians must pay special attention to their revenue cycle management.
For this purpose, you must embrace the changes instead of following outdated models. It would help if you always kept in mind that a laboratory practice cannot survive unless adapted to a changing medical industry environment. You might suffer substantial losses if you’re not up-to-date with all that’s happening in the billing and coding world. It has been estimated that laboratory practitioners suffer a loss of around $125 billion because of billing and coding errors. This may occur due to the lack of knowledge about recent billing trends.
Billing and coding are two tightly related aspects of the current healthcare industry. Both practices are required in the reimbursement cycle to ensure that lab technicians are paid for their services. However, maximum reimbursements are only possible if your laboratory billing system is efficient. Because even minor errors can lead to delayed or partial payments, lab practitioners can face critical financial challenges if this phenomenon continues for an extended period.
Therefore, it is crucial to streamline laboratory billing services for maximum reimbursements. However, whether dealing with underpayments or denied claims, you can eliminate the errors by implementing the following strategies.
4 Success Factors of Laboratory Billing Services:
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Accurate Information Collection
For successful lab billing services, the registration staff of your healthcare practice have to work together as a team with the billing department. The front desk staff in any practice plays an essential role in verifying patients’ insurance eligibility and collecting data, copays and deductibles. The optimization of revenue cycle management depends on the accuracy of the information they collect.
Lab billers use this information to prepare and submit claims. A slight error in patients’ demographic information, such as name, date of birth, age, gender, phone number, address, insurance ID, etc., can impact laboratory billing services. As laboratory billing starts from the registration desk, healthcare providers must have the best front-end team. That has in-depth knowledge and experience to enter patients and insurance information correctly.
Moreover, with automated solutions, you can minimize the chances of errors and streamline the information flow. For example, you should stop using manual methods to collect and process patient data. You can move from paper charts to Electronic Health Records (EHR). EHR can be accessed at any time. It saves your time and increases the accuracy of medical records.
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Avoid Coding Errors
Medical coding plays an essential role in laboratory billing services. Because coding errors can lead to complex claim denials, which cannot be handled quickly, you should hand over this responsibility to only certified and highly trained medical coders. Coders take a lab practitioner’s diagnosis and prescription and translate it accurately into numeric or alphanumeric code. Every injury, medical procedure, equipment, diagnosis, prescription, and treatment has its corresponding code. Reimbursement from insurance companies depends on the accuracy of such codes. So, you should ensure that medical coders perform their tasks efficiently.
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Efficient claims management
Laboratory practitioners lose a significant amount of their hard-earned revenue due to the high rate of claim denials. There are many reasons for denied/rejected claims. From missing data to wrong medical codes, there are several reasons that payers refuse to reimburse a claim. Claims can only be allowed if they are filed within specific days or within their filing limit. So, to get your revenue cycle management back on track, you should closely monitor the performance of your billing team. Make sure that they are filing error-free claims.
Moreover, it is also the responsibility of the lab billers to file clean claims promptly. For this purpose, they should double-check the provided information to ensure that a claim doesn’t contain errors. Furthermore, healthcare providers should ensure the availability of advanced billing software to submit claims electronically because the paper filing of medical claims leaves considerable room for errors.
On the other hand, by electronic submission, your RCM team can easily track the submitted claims. This enables them to identify critical areas for improvement to ensure that a single problem doesn’t turn into a systemic one.
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Outsource Laboratory Billing Services
Outsourcing always comes with immense benefits. As per industry experts, outsourcing lab medical billing services will become the backbone of the US healthcare industry by 2025.
Some of the factors that have fostered the expansion of the hiring lab billing companies in the US market are:
- Rising healthcare expenditure due to the need for efficient billing.
- Reducing the burden of enormous patient flow management.
- The adoption of advanced technologies by offshore billing experts expedites intricate processes.
Outsourced billing experts have extensive industry experience streamlining the lab revenue cycle management. They stay compliant with all the federal lab billing and coding regulations. They also undergo constant training to keep pace with the continuous changes in the healthcare industry. As a result, they can process the claims as per industry standards, which increases the payment collections.
Why chose Laboratory Billings for Billings Services:
By outsourcing, you can save a hefty amount in billers’ recruitment, salaries, training, office workspace, purchase and maintenance of advanced billing software, and other costs related to the in-house billing department, which reduces the financial burden of laboratory practitioners. In addition to this, healthcare providers get rid of time-consuming and hectic administrative tasks. As a result, they can spend considerable time with the patients, which is necessary to improve your reputation and the patient flow at your practice.
Laboratory Billings is a multi-specialty lab billing company in the United States which provides custom-tailored laboratory billing services to meet your financial needs. Contact us to schedule a free demo.