Collection Efficiency in the Billing Department
According to Elizabeth W. Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, director of Knowledge Management for Physician Practice Inc., in order to operate a billing department of any establishment with optimal effectiveness and efficiency; there must be a good and sound management in the billing and collections areas. She also added that applying various effective management strategies to the billing and collections sections can help any establishment to avoid common problems that lead to the decrease of company’s earnings. Along with that, it is very important to establish expectations. For instance, in the hospital, expectations need to be set with the patients, the payers, and the medical staff and personnel. And, the usual problem practices in the hospital billing department is getting the patients to pay their hospital bills. However, every hospital has its own financial policy when payment due; as well as how it can be paid, but still, many patients do not have full idea on it. Therefore, this is the major problem experience in hospital billing department. Even the hospital has a financial policy implemented, if it is not well informed to the patients; the patients will not be able to follow it effectively. The billing policy should state what the patients must do about their service payment due. In the same way, the billing department knows efficiently how it handles collection as well; for the billing or rebilling fees among other hospital bills. On the other hand, expectations, needs to be implemented for the billing and collections staff. This can be done by adopting policies and procedures regarding how the establishment practices handle past-due accounts, including addressing questions such as when patients should be called about their past-due accounts and when to send an account to a collection agency. If the collection policy provides the patient for a call to settle his or her account payables or else it will be forwarded to the collection agency; then, it will still do nothing. All collectible accounts need constant follow up protocols that can work effectively for prompt payment from the payers.
(http://www.supercoder.com/articles/articles-alerts/mob/improve-billing-department-efficiency-with-four-management-techniques/)
Correspondingly, any establishment must set expectations in payer negotiations. Another illustration is billing practices in the insurance companies. These insurance companies usually send contract to their clients; the insurance fee schedule is already indicated in the contract. And, normally, they give certain grace period to settle your payables. Next, accountability among the billing staff must be established. Proper practices should organize any billing offices so that staff members know their responsibilities so as they can also be held responsible for their job. Additionally, any establishment should avoid batching work. In working by batches only delays work and create overlapping of paper works. Employees sometimes do not realize how much time they spend in doing it. In the insurance company, there are some events that claim problems have been encountered by many policy holders. Every time this problem occurs, it is being recorded in a log book for claim dispute. More than that, the insurance management and the staff should focus on the problems and do their best to resolve each problem with every client, try to evaluate the causes of the problem and work on it in order to avoid to happen it again. Similarly, it is also vital to acknowledge the promotion of team work among the staff members in the billing department. Also, they must be treated as part of the practice team; and not isolated problem place. Above all, communication is very crucial in practicing effective and efficient teamwork in the billing department. In the same token, innovative approaches and strategies such as application of new information technology will help largely in minimizing human errors especially in computations and data input. Computer system helps billing staff to easily detect if the patient’s card insurance is still valid or not; since computer system can create a memo that reminds the front desk to ask the patient about his or her current coverage. Computer system also provides chart feature to the biller and helps him or her to note quickly on a claim or problems.
(http://www.supercoder.com/articles/articles-alerts/mob/improve-billing-department-efficiency-with-four-management-techniques/)
Subsequently, implementing a centralized billing-office operations can greatly help in improving billing task consistency and provides great amount supervision from the management to achieve collation efficiency. The managers must develop a staffing plan through calculating the period of time needed in order to accomplish any billing tasks; as well as to be able to set realistic productivity expectations. In this relation, there should be continuous staff-performance monitoring by managers in ensuring and efficient or standard expectations were met by the billing staff. Whenever necessary, managers must hire new middle managers who can handle billing staff closely; so as to embrace billing performance measures.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_3_58/ai_n6068757/)
References:
(http://www.supercoder.com/articles/articles-alerts/mob/improve-billing-department-efficiency-with-four-management-techniques/)
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_3_58/ai_n6068757/)
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