In business, we frequently hear employers say “Don’t rock the boat”…but what if the boat is sinking and you don’t even know about it? Employers can not stick their heads in the sand and hope their problems go away. If you cannot find the “perfect” billing manager for your practice, perhaps hiring an interim billing manager is the best solution for your business. Advantage provides interim management services where we place a highly experienced and knowledgeable individual in your practice on a short, intermediate and/or long-term basis while we recruit an ideal candidate for you – all depending upon the needs of your practice.
One of the biggest headaches and greatest challenges for a practice is collecting the revenue you generate each day. Most practices do not even know where they are losing the most money. In the hundreds of billing departments we have assessed, Advantage has found the accounts receivable in the 120+ days bucket is much higher than the national benchmark of less than 10%. Depending upon location and regions of insurance, etc., it is estimated that more than 50% of the 120+ days AR bucket is written off as bad debt. In addition, some practices re-age their accounts when they resubmit the EOB(s), which miscalculates the AR buckets. How do you track down all this lost revenue?
Placement of a highly effective and efficient interim billing manager can quickly implement systems to improve efficiency, profitability and best practices. They can provide insight into your practice by looking at your systems with a fresh pair of eyes. Your practice benefits from their many years of experience working as a consultant in practices of many different sizes and types. And from an HR perspective, hiring an interim billing manager significantly reduces the risk of a “bad hire” as an employee and all the resulting salary, benefits and severance costs that can run well into six figures.
So where do you begin? First, have Advantage start with a full and thorough assessment of where your business stands in terms of profit and loss, market viability, billing processes and efficiency. This is the first glance at your practice as a whole, and the findings can be quite revealing.
Many practices will immediately discover the obvious and glaring truth of their profit margins – so much of it is wasting away in inefficient and inadequate billing practices! Development of responsible billing procedures and protocols and ensuring consistent and effective insurance billing follow-up can make a significant difference in the turnaround. Best practices must be incorporated into your billing processes as follows:
- Charge Posting
- Within 24 hours for office
- Within 48 hours for surgical
- Payment Posting
- Within 24-48 hours of deposit
- Denials
- Worked within 72 hours
- AR Bucket: 120+ Days
- <10%
But how do you implement changes with a veteran staff that does not take well to change? Utilizing an interim billing manager may be the smartest and most economical choice for organizing change, for inspiring the staff to get on board with new billing protocols, and establishing best practices for your business. Every growing practice has to face the facts in order to continue growing in the right direction.