Healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) used to be a strategy for cutting costs. Then for a time the BPO growth trend slowed as more organizations underwent mergers and acquisitions. Newly formed parent systems began to build Central Billing Offices to bring revenue cycle tasks back in house and to streamline their vendor relations.

However, the new reality is a need to balance the overwhelming need to keep up with a rapidly changing industry with growing patient expectations.

Topics: extended business office, healthcare business process outsourcing

Both healthcare providers and medical collection agencies alike hear a common complaint among patients who have been sent to bad debt: “I didn’t know I owed a bill.” More than likely your healthcare organization has a procedure in place to send several statements over a period of time, and best practice organizations will also follow up early and often by phone.

But must you also notify the patient prior to sending them to collections?

Topics: FAQ, medical debt collections, medical debt collection laws, healthcare compliance

Price transparency is a critical element for ensuring not only a healthy revenue cycle, but also patient engagement and overall organizational success. With the spread of consumerism in healthcare, more patients are expecting pre-service estimates and a seamless billing and payment process. However there is one primary factor in that process that can be less than clear: insurance coverage.

Topics: extended business office, insurance 101, medicare, medicaid

In healthcare, as it is in many industries, cash is king. Of course your financial team will deep dive into financial performance throughout the year, but on a regular basis many hospitals and practices assess the health of their revenue cycle based on cash flow alone. However, accounts receivable is only one metric to monitor. Here are five additional simple key metrics that have been identified by the AAFP to measure regularly to ensure the health of your revenue cycle.

Topics: healthcare revenue cycle management, insurance denial management, medical debt collections, healthcare KPIs, healthcare data analytics, process improvement, 5 Metrics, benchmarking

When attempting to collect from patients it is easy to make simple mistakes that could cost your practice money. Financial conversations can be stressful, and in order to make it as comfortable for the patient as possible representatives may be too accommodating and make arrangements that do not benefit the practice in order to maintain the patient relationship.

Topics: medical debt collections, patient collection mistakes, payment arrangements

“Stop harassing me!”

Hopefully you have not had this conversation too many times in your attempt to collect a past-due balance from a patient, but chances are you or someone on your patient accounting team has heard this before.

Topics: FAQ, medical debt collection laws, harassment, healthcare compliance

In light of evolving threats – like the recent WannaCry ransomware outbreak – the data security industry is seeing a shift in approach from traditional signature-based tools to more behavioral analytics. This is a particularly important trend for the healthcare industry to follow given the targeted attacks many systems across the country, and throughout the world, have experienced in recent years.

Topics: HIT, PHI, healthcare data security

Whether to credit report your patients’ overdue medical debt is a business decision that must be made by healthcare leadership in every organization, from single-provider practices to health systems. It can be a difficult one to make when your organization is in the business of providing care.

Topics: FAQ, medical debt collections, medical debt collection laws, credit reporting

Of the many emerging trends in the healthcare industry, one in particular is swiftly becoming the status quo. Hospital merger and acquisition activity jumped 70% from 2010 to 2015, and the trend is continuing upward toward a much more consolidated market.

Topics: extended business office, legacy AR workdown, patient account system, conversion assistance

Insurance claim denials plague most hospital and medical practice billing offices, although to what extent can be hard to determine. There is a noticeable lack of information on the industry average for denied claims.

Topics: extended business office, insurance denial management, insurance reimbursement, insurance claim denials