Wednesday, 18 May 2022

How Outsourcing Your Addiction Treatment Center Medical Billing Can Reduce Denial Rates

Sorting through behavioral health reimbursement regulations can be a time-consuming and costly process. It’s common for small facilities like addiction treatment centers to have limited administrative assistance for billing and collections—some providers even manage billing themselves. This arrangement can be overwhelming and lead to breaks in the revenue cycles and lost income. 

Addiction treatment facilities can outsource their behavioral health billing to reduce denial rates and improve cash flow—and Coronis Health can help.

Coronis Health is a healthcare revenue cycle management company that offers specialized solutions using industry-leading technology. When it comes to unique billing for mental health, substance abuse, and eating disorders, we have specially designed services that can help your facility maximize revenue so you can focus on patient care.

What Are the Most Common Causes of Increased Denial Rates?

Behavioral health billing is an extremely complex process that involves numerous variables, making it difficult to standardize your billing guidelines. Not securing authorization for treatment or using the wrong modifier can lead to reimbursement denials.

Insurance plans and benefits can be very specific and widely vary between patients, so it is critical to conduct a verification of benefits (VOB) before any services are received. A VOB ensures that a service or treatment the patient is seeking is covered and determines the amount their insurance will pay for the services. 

Though it can be a tedious process, it is better that patients know what they have to cover personally to make timely payments. It is best to collect as much information as you can and make copies of insurance cards to ensure you know how to receive payment for services or treatment provided.

Coronis Health stock photo of a female working on computer

When billing for behavioral health, there are common procedural technology (CPT) codes that insurance providers require to determine reimbursements to facilities. Addiction treatment centers need to understand the types of services they offer and the related CPT codes. Using the incorrect codes can lead to claim denials and lost revenue for your operations.

Filing a claim is more than populating the correct patient demographic information and identifying the valid CPT codes—you also have to consider the place of service, type of bill, rendering provider details and whether to file interim claims or admit to discharge. Behavioral health claims should be submitted in the proper billing format, which varies by insurance company. You can find out the company’s preferred billing format and the timeline allowed by the plan during the VOB. Double-checking your information and billing format can lead to fewer denials and more collections for your facility.

What are the Advantages of Outsourcing Mental Health Billing Services?

Providing a specialized service calls for a specialized billing solution. With a time-consuming and complex process, an expert service that knows the ins and outs of mental health medical billing can be an invaluable addition. Outsourcing your mental and behavioral health billing services can:

Reduce administrative time: The time and cost to hire, train, and keep up with changing policies can create a significant burden for mental health providers. Transferring the responsibility frees up staff to handle in-house tasks for providers and patients.

Increase reimbursements and decrease denials: A qualified vendor can submit claims quickly and efficiently to ensure a higher reimbursement from payers without mistakes, denials, or delayed payments.

Expert billing services can also:

  • Create consistency
  • Reduce errors
  • Improve revenue cycle
  • Keep patient data secure
  • Handle audit and compliance

Addiction Treatment Medical Billing; How to Stay on Top of Regulatory Changes

Coronis Health Stock photo of worker in lab coat typing on laptop

Outsourcing behavioral health billing can relieve the burden on providers and administrators, particularly when it comes to decreasing denials and receiving collections. Medical billing vendors can also help facilities understand government regulations and compliance. Billing professionals stay up to date on the latest rules, regulations, and coding requirements so you can focus on patient care. The behavioral health billing landscape is an ever-changing scene that consumes time and resources.

Coronis Health provides medical billing with a personalized touch so that our experts know what regulatory changes are coming, when they will be implemented, and how to prepare your facility.

Medical Billing Audits; What to Know

A medical billing audit examines documents to ensure accuracy, speaks to the reliability of information from your facility, and reviews health records and medical billing data submitted by the payers. Audits seek out and monitor inaccurate, incomplete, or inappropriate billing methods or documentation. Outsourcing billing to a professional vendor like Coronis Health can keep your data organized and accurate. While audits are compliance measures, they can also help ensure that billing practices are beneficial to your facility and help make processes more efficient.

Coronis Health safeguards data and provides professionals who execute billing with perfection from filling out forms and submissions to follow-up. Our team can help your facility cultivate financial success.

Questions about Outsourcing Your Addiction Treatment Center Medical Billing? Contact Coronis Health Today!



from
https://www.coronishealth.com/blog/how-outsourcing-your-addiction-treatment-center-medical-billing-can-reduce-denial-rates/

Wednesday, 4 May 2022

Best Practices for Improved Financials Post-COVID Part 1: Systems Optimization

The COVID pandemic became a public health crisis that presented challenges with growing repercussions. Practices had the task of pivoting their business and system operations to restore and strengthen revenues, adapt to the changing environment post-pandemic, and accelerate their growth.

In a webinar, medical billing experts from Coronis Health join for a panel discussion about best practices for improved financials post-COVID. Panelists also provide case studies on how practices have created smarter operations by leveraging technology, understanding coding and analytics, and reducing unnecessary fees. In this 3-part series, we share the highlights of that webinar and case studies to demonstrate the value of teaming up with experts in revenue cycle management.

The Critical Importance of System Optimization

The healthcare revenue cycle is very complex. There are many moving parts and different facets involved – all of which directly or indirectly impact your practice’s cash flow and revenue. 

One of the goals of Coronis is building a partnership that provides an analysis and review of existing operations and systems, with the goal of improving them and making them more efficient.

Optimizing Your Systems Case Studies

When you are reviewing your systems, you want to understand how you can optimize your systems best. But what does optimizing your system really mean? And how do you know you are actually optimizing your system? 

The first case study features a large pain group who loved their system’s EHR but was less than satisfied with the practice management system. 

We did a full task analysis of the onboarding process, identifying that the providers were very happy with the EHR, but on the back end, the administrators felt like they had no visibility on what was going on in the billing side. The staff didn’t understand where the charges were going or who was working on what. 

Despite the obvious issues, changing systems can be risky when it comes to cash flow and claims submission. How can we help these providers keep the EHR they love while achieving better visibility on the administrative side?

We took a look at their systems and moved them from their current practice management system to a new PM system. We did a system integration that pulled charges from their current EHR and sent them to their new practice management system. This enabled transparency while improving cash flow.

Results:

  • Identified improvement on coding for ultrasounds due to client owning the ultrasounds (nice add-on)
  • Increased overall monthly receipts by 10% because of improved coding and implemented audit for charge submission
  • Provided access to Coronis Health BI tool to analyze denials to drive change
  • Implemented click-to-pay patient statements to increase payment for patient receivables

Our second case study features a rural urgent care group that had an in-house biller for 20 years and was worried about outsourcing to a company that is not their own. For a group that belongs to a small, tight-knit community, they were also scared that these new individuals may not perform as well as those that have worked with them for 20 years. In addition, they had felt that since their system wasn’t broken, it did not need any fixing.

We wanted to understand their systems and their culture, because for us to build a partnership, we had to know what drove their business and what their patients’ expectations were. The practice was hit hard with COVID and almost had to close their doors because they weren’t able to keep the staffing on the front end to do patient registration. 

Within two months of working with them, we did a full task analysis on all their manual processes and created automation and efficiency to improve their revenue cycle. We utilized their specific software to help them with their manual tasks, and we implemented a verification tool that was already in the software to replace the manual task of verifying services.

Results:

  • Helped the client keep their doors open to treat patients during the pandemic while taking care of the back office billing work
  • Provided the client with resources to replace their retiring billing manager of 20+ years without causing a break/pause in the billing work
  • Maintained the cash flow for the client during the initial transition period 
  • Activated the verification tool that saved the the time required to go into different payer websites

Are you losing revenue due to inefficient processes? Let us help you optimize your systems and maximize your revenue cycle. Contact us today to learn more.



from
https://www.coronishealth.com/blog/best-practices-for-improved-financials-post-covid-part-1-systems-optimization/

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