The financial components of this process can be particularly tricky, but luckily there are software programs and other tools to help it along. When it comes to administering these different financial processes, that’s what’s known as healthcare Revenue Cycle Management or RCM. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today!
What is Revenue Cycle Management for Healthcare?
The healthcare revenue cycle involves a number of steps, including:
- Coding
- Charge Capture
- Scrubbing Claims
- Claims Submission
- Insurer Communications
- Payment Collections
- Claims Denial Management
- Patient Collections
Healthcare revenue cycle management involves optimizing these steps to boost a practice’s profitability, while also improving the patient experience. With effective RCM, the medical billing and collections process is streamlined. Thanks to this, the time it takes to start a patient’s file to collecting their payment is shorter.
The Benefits of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management
However, shortening the time to collect payment isn’t the only advantage of RCM.
Here are some others:
- Maximizing cash flow: With payments coming in on time and cases being closed accordingly, you’ll have the cash flow you need to sustain a profitable practice
- Improving claim acceptance rates: Claim denials bog down medical practices all the time, but that doesn’t need to be the case! With healthcare revenue cycle management services, you can reduce the likelihood of claim denials and speed up the acceptance process.
- Reducing the cost to collect: Increasing point-of-service collections is incredibly important for healthcare practices. Particularly because a majority of their income comes directly from patients themselves! With co-payments and deductibles on the rise, it’s increasingly common for patients, rather than their insurance company, to be responsible for their healthcare bills. If you wait to collect these payments AFTER service has been provided, the likelihood of collecting their remaining balance drops significantly.
- Complying with strict security standards: The importance of RCM compliance can’t be underestimated, and it plays an important role in your collections and billings processes (speaking of which, have you seen our recent post on the new medical practice evaluation and management rules for 2021? Find it here)
Want to learn more about the benefits of RCM services? See our post on the subject here.
Outsourcing RCM Services
The risks of not having effective RCM services in place are nearly as extreme as how they can benefit your practice when done right. More and more healthcare practices are opting to outsource their RCM services for these reasons.
Providers want to enjoy the benefits of healthcare revenue cycle management and avoid the consequences of non-compliance or inefficient revenue streams. At the same time, they want to free up more time spent on paperwork so their staff can assist in providing an even better patient experience.
If your practice’s revenue cycle could use some work, we are here to help. RevStream’s healthcare revenue cycle management services have helped countless clinics boost their profitability and patient experience. And we’re here to do the same for you!
Click here to learn about our services. If you have questions or you’re ready to get started today, contact us here. We can’t wait to hear from you!