Mental health professionals play a crucial role in improving the lives of people. Particularly those who are struggling with cognitive, behavioural, and emotional illness.
No doubt, the primary objective of medical practitioners is to deliver the standard aid to the patient. But one can’t deny the fact that optimised revenue cycle management is the lifeblood of the healthcare business. Because without having enough cash in hand, you can’t meet your medical expenses and keep your business running smoothly.
But imagine the frustration, when healthcare providers don’t get reimbursed for the medical care provided to the patients. Declining reimbursements is the major factor that impacts the financial well-being of mental health professionals.
However, in this challenging era, managing behavioural healthcare billing services has become more complicated than ever before. Because of the latest evolutions in terms of payers’ policies, medical coding and billing guidelines demand expertise and unique set skills.
Therefore, managing financial matters along with busy schedules have become a major factor that stresses them out the most. Just think for a while, how it can be challenging for mental health professionals to manage their billing tasks. While focusing on patient care.
However, it’s a fact that the success of a healthcare business depends on two factors. One is increased patient volume and the second is efficient management of billing and coding services. Therefore, mental health professionals should adopt innovative billing solutions to keep a perfect balance between their medical & non-medical obligations.
As a medical practitioner do you want to get financial peace of mind without excessive burden? Then you must outsource behavioural and mental health billing services to a top-notch billing company.
Outsourced billing specialists take care of your financial health and play a crucial role in ensuring the success of your business as a whole.
1. Focus on Core Activities
Staying engaged in managing the complicated tasks involved in the revenue cycle management can divert your attention from core aspects. As a result, you don’t get sufficient time to spend on treating the patients. Which can lead to negative consequences i.e. low patient volume, damaged reputation.
However, mental health professionals should never take their patients for granted. Because with the current state of the economy, it is more important than ever to focus on your patients.
Looking for innovative ways to concentrate on your core competencies without losing the quality of your medical claims? Then outsourcing revenue cycle management is the best solution to keep your business afloat.
In this way, you can prioritize your time for activities. That will help you to get your business off the ground.
Outsourced mental health billing experts reduce your administrative burden associated with the billing tasks. Such as: medical coding, charge entry, claims submissions, consistent claims follow-up, denial management, payment posting and revenue collection.
They identify and resolve the financial stressors i.e increasing bad debts, a pile of unpaid claims, etc. Eventually, you can utilize extra time and resources in building a loyal customer base. And building impactful strategies for a better reputation in the market.
2. Eliminate Coding Errors
Medical coding is considered as the essence of the healthcare revenue cycle management. Because they describe the patients’ diagnoses, treatments and healthcare services, a patient received. Coding errors i.e. upcoding, unbundling, not only results in hard claim denials but also leads to healthcare frauds.
However, medical billing for behavioural health involves a special set of medical codes. Assigning the precise diagnostic codes for behavioural healthcare services requires in-depth knowledge about the ICD-10 and CPT codes. Therefore, medical practitioners should consult with highly trained coders.
When you collaborate with a professional medical billing company, you get access to certified medical coders. They stay on top of every update in coding, billing and regulatory changes related to behavioral and mental health billing.
As a result, they become able to prepare the medical claims with an accurate set of codes. And save your practice from losing compensation.
3. Better Claims Processing
As we have already discussed that preparing ‘clean medical claims’ is a full-time job. Managing patients and administrative tasks can be challenging for mental health professionals. Therefore, they prefer to outsource their time-consuming tasks i.e. billing, coding etc.
Outsourced behavioural health billing specialists are trained enough to submit error-free medical claims. Which reduces the chances of claim denials and ensures the maximum as well as timely reimbursements. Moreover, to increase the efficiency of the claims, they follow a systematic procedure that involves:
Claims scrubbing
It is a crucial part of revenue collections management. Off-shore billing companies hold a dedicated task force that is responsible to file clean medical claims.
For this purpose, they carefully analyse the medical claims to catch the errors before submitting them to the insurance companies. During claims scrubbing, highly trained billers review the following data to eliminate the errors (if any).
- Patients’ demographic information.
- Healthcare providers’ data.
- Medical necessity.
- Verification of patient’s insurance eligibility.
- Compare the codes with the medical procedures and treatments.
- Data about Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs.
The process of claims scrubbing improves the chances of claims acceptance in the first attempt. That result in the:
- High rate of clean claims.
- Prevents claim denials.
- Faster payments.
- Consistent cash flow.
File Claims on Time
Time is the most important factor in streamlining the reimbursements. So, outsourced billers have a complete understanding of the claims filing limits of the insurance companies. In order to ensure faster revenue collections, they file the claims by a specific deadline.
For example, Medicare requires you to submit the medical claim within 12 months after the date of healthcare service provided. Some claims are required to be filed within 90 or 180 days after the service date.
4. Increase Revenues
Outsourced billing experts for behavioural health come with a wealth of knowledge. They are knowledgeable about the various complexities of billing and coding processes.
Their role doesn’t end with the filing of clean medical claims. They follow up with the insurance companies to stay informed about the status of the claims, either paid or unpaid. They stay connected with the payers until mental health professionals get paid for the medical services they provided to the patients.
In addition to this, off-shore billing experts reduce the existing denial rate to optimize the medical accounts receivable collections. Which positively impacts your behavioural health organization’s capacity to collect revenue.
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