Tips for Increasing Practice Revenue

By Michelle Hentzell

1. Be sure to collect accurate patient information. If it’s a new patient, be sure to get their address, phone number(s), birth date and insurance information when they call your office to schedule their appointment. For your existing patients, verify their information prior to every visit. By having the most accurate information possible, it will eliminate problems you may have on the back end.

2. Be sure to share with your patients your financial policies. These policies should be signed and dated by the patient and placed in their chart.

3. A policy should be set for no show patients. If a patient does not call to reschedule 24 hours before the appointment, charge them a fee. That is time they are taking away from another patient that may need your care.

4. Verify the patient’s insurance prior to their seeing the physician. If the patient has a copay, collect it prior to the visit. Unfortunately, there are patients that never pay their copay once they leave your office.

5. Be sure to use ABNs and waivers for services that are not covered. Advanced Beneficiary Notices (ABNs) are required by Medicare for patients prior to having certain types of services. Other insurance providers may require waivers to be signed by your patients. This practice makes the patients aware of their responsibility for services that are not covered.

6. Be sure to capture all charges. Daily, a staff member should check to make sure that every patient that visited your office was charged for the services they received during their visit.

7. Be sure to carefully review EOBs. These documents can provide you important information to help you improve your billing and collection process. You can find things about timeliness of payments, accuracy of payments, etc.

8. It is helpful to track denials by reason and by insurance provider. Doing this will help you identify if there is a problem with the billing process.

9. When available, use automatic payment posting. Not only will you receive payment more quickly but it will be more accurate. This will free up staff time to focus on payment collections.

10. Be sure to update and review fee schedules. It is important to update your practices fee schedule each year or when you update your insurance provider contracts. Also, compare the charges that all of your insurance payers that you use in your practice. You do not want to lose revenue, remember that insurance companies will pay the lesser of the contracted amount or the billed amount.

11. Hire a good collection agency. Patients talk to other potential patients and if you do not enforce collection, the word gets around.