It’s that time of year again. Medicare fees are in danger of being slashed for 2012 and your revenue will be impacted.   Bah humbug! Since Medicare is a huge payer, almost every medical organization across the country will feel the impact of any cuts that are made. So, it is important to know how to quickly calculate the potential impact on your overall electronic payment revenue.

For this blog, I am going to use the following formula to determine the percentage impact to overall monthly electronic payment revenue:

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2012 will bring many new challenges and opportunities for managing reimbursement and payment programs at medical practices. Are you prepared to help your practice avoid pitfalls and take charge in the coming year?

Join us on Thursday, January 5 at 1:00 pm EST, for a complimentary webinar, Reimbursement Reality 2012: The Challenges – and Opportunities – for Medical Practices. Register Now.

During the one-hour webinar, nationally recognized revenue cycle expert and author Elizabeth Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC, will offer advice about managing the reimbursement environment and will discuss:

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Keeping on top of your revenue cycle is not a once-a-week or twice-a-week job. Every day, practices should enter charges, submit claims, and work any rejections and denials. The more attention these various efforts get, the faster your practice will get paid.

Setting expectations is the key—especially in a busy office with so many other pressing duties to attend to. The only way to ensure a constant flow of revenue is to set expectations for physicians, coders, and billing staff regarding timeliness and efficiency.

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For a long time, the practice I work at – North Platte Nebraska Physician Group – used a clearinghouse that made us feel as if we were sending claims into thin air. Although we were sending claims electronically, we never knew where they were in the processing cycle. Too often, we found ourselves bumped up against timely filing limits that hurt our reimbursement.

So we searched for a new clearinghouse that would provide the tools and the customer service we needed to improve our financial picture. After an in-depth review of our options, we selected an Internet-based organization for its terrific customer service, plain English reporting, and easy ability to view claims all the way through the revenue cycle. This new system has helped cut our timely filing reductions, decrease the number of duplicate claims, and improve our accounts receivable (A/R) tremendously.

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Practices nationwide are being asked to accept more financial responsibility with patients and payers. As you tackle these challenges, it’s more important than ever to ensure your workflow is running at an optimal level. In this complimentary learn six specific workflow strategies that can help any practice improve overall efficiency, which will ultimately strengthen a practice’s bottom line.

Join us on Wednesday, May 25 at 1:00 PM EDT, for a free webinar: 6 Workflow Tips to Improve Practice Efficiencies.

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Most practices diligently track denied claims because of the impact they have on revenue; however there are other types of denials – hidden ones – that often fly under the radar while slowly draining revenue. In this complimentary webinar learn how to maximize your reimbursement by identifying and tracking these “hidden denials.”

Join us on Wednesday, April 20 at 1:00 pm EDT, for a free webinar: Hidden Denials and Appeal Letters: Tips and Tricks to Maximizing Your Reimbursement.

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Thank you to everyone who attended the January 13 webinar, Reimbursement Reality 2011: The Challenges – and Opportunities – for Medical Practices. During this one-hour event, Elizabeth Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC, discussed the key reimbursement changes for 2011 and how to use those changes to your benefit; how to manage high-deductible health plans; and how get the most out of government incentive programs such as PQRI.

To learn more about reimbursement changes for 2011 and how they will impact your practice, click here to download the recorded webinar.

Join us on Thursday, January 13 at 1:00 pm EST for a complimentary webinar to learn more about the 2011 reimbursement environment—and how to avoid the pitfalls and take charge in 2011. During this hour, you’ll hear Elizabeth Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC, discuss:

• How to leverage 2011′s key changes—including Medicare reimbursement and the impact by specialty, an overview of the CPT changes and the payers’ new focus on medical homes
• How to manage the proliferation of high-deductible health plans—it pays to get into the price transparency game now
• How to optimize your bonus payments from the government—eRx, PQRI and the EHR incentive payment program

Participants can earn up to 2.0 Continuing Education Units (CEU) from the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) by completing the pre-test and attending the live webinar.*

*This program has the prior approval of AAPC for up to 2.0 continuing education hours. Granting of prior approval in no way constitutes endorsement by AAPC of the program content or the program sponsor.

Register now.

Practice management challenges, such as declining reimbursement and reducing days in A/R, are impacting all medical practices’ financial health. In order to address these challenges, ATD Resources adopted a strategy that has helped them realize revenue cycle improvements, including improving payment per case by 17% in less than one year. 

Join us on Thursday, September 30 at 1:00 PM EDT, for a complimentary webinar to learn what this strategy entails and how it can help all healthcare organizations focus on revenue cycle improvements that will enhance reimbursement.

In under an hour, you’ll hear Bette Warn, Executive Director at ATD Resources, discuss:

• Practical, hands-on approaches that will allow you to improve your bottom line.
• Strategies for identifying opportunities for change and improvement, as well as effective tactics for implementation.
• Tips and techniques for exploring and selecting technology and tools that will most effectively help you achieve your medical group objectives.

Register now.

Using benchmarks to rate the success of your practice’s revenue cycle is an age-old “best practice.” No matter the specialty or size of your practice, it is important to periodically track, trend, and review performance data. It is the only surefire way to understand your financial strengths and weaknesses, and subsequently improve both.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve found, however, is that practices may think they’re adequately tracking certain benchmarks when they’re not. In reality, it’s not at all unusual for practices to be a little uncertain about whether they’re correctly calculating and analyzing important numbers.

So, I’d like to address two standard benchmarks that, in my experience, are particularly thorny: days in accounts receivable (A/R) and net collections percentage. It’s essential to track both accurately, because they demonstrate a practice’s ability to quickly turn over A/R and collect all money due. Let’s walk through: the definition of each term; the proper way to calculate each; an example calculation; and some common potential analysis pitfalls. Read More ›