How Practice Health Checks Can Take Your Revenue Cycle Management from “No Funds” to “FUN”!

Did you get immediately bored by the words “revenue cycle management”?

We don’t blame you- it’s not for everyone. But if serving your patients is the beating heart of your practice, revenue cycle management is equivalent to the breathing lungs that your business can’t thrive without. Breathe out - claims. Breathe in - revenue.

Do you know how well that part of your practice is running? Do you even know how to begin to answer that question? 

Most providers don’t. Or, they have about half of the picture. 

What is a Practice Health Check?

When we don’t feel well, we go to the doctor for a checkup. They check our vitals; blood pressure, temperature, heart rate. They ask more questions to determine whether or not they need to run more tests- blood work, pathology cultures etc, eventually leading to a diagnosis and a treatment plan. 

A Practice Health Check is the same thing for your private practice; it evaluates vitals (in this case called KPIs), digs deeper into your processes to understand the root of the symptoms you may be feeling in your business, and provides a plan for how to improve the business.

What Can You Learn from a Practice Health Check?

The Practice Health Check gives you insights into the performance of seven different billing and administrative categories of your business; Credentialing, Human Resources, Patient Registration, Eligibility and Benefits, Payment Posting, Aging Follow-Up, and Claim Submission. We consider all of these areas to be essential to a successful revenue cycle management strategy, and we use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in each category to evaluate how well that category is performing. We also do a thorough examination by conducting interviews with your staff, observing your processes and performing our own independent review of all of the components in each of those systems to understand the inner workings of your business.

Scratching your head? That’s okay- our Practice Wellness Experts are here to guide you through the whole process. 

A Practice Wellness Expert (we shorten it to PWE) is one of our highly experienced billers who will have you walk through the billing and administrative aspects of your practice, evaluating what is working well, what could be improved, and what is missing from your practice. It’s a real person supporting real people (you) who help others (your patients). Along the way they’ll impart some of their billing wisdoms. We mentioned earlier that revenue cycle management isn’t for everyone- our PWEs LOVE revenue cycle management, and they love helping others to understand it even more.

For anything in your practice that requires improvement or development, your PWE will give you a list of recommendations that you can either choose to implement on your own (we’re all about provider empowerment!) or you can choose to continue working with your PWE to implement these recommendations.

If you feel like something isn’t working in your practice and you can’t quite put your finger on it, we’ll identify it for you. If you know what isn’t working but have no idea how to fix it, we’ll define it for you. We’ll teach you exactly what you need to know to help your practice thrive.

How Will Your Practice Benefit from a Practice Health Check?

Ultimately, our aim is that you walk away with a clear understanding of how your practice is functioning and what you can do to make it function even better. 

So far, our practice health checks have helped providers uncover:

• Extra Money! In the form of uncollected revenue - some that can be recovered, and some that can be collected on future claims with adjusted processes.

• Solutions to Denied Claims - some simple fixes, and some more complex, but all remediable!

• Needs for Outsourcing - and the confidence to hire someone, train them, evaluate them realistically, ultimately gaining a valuable team member and a few hours back in a day.

• Their Peace of Mind - Yep. It’s the difference between googling your symptoms on WebMD, convincing yourself that you have a rare and incurable disease, and seeing a doctor who gives you a definite diagnosis, a prescription or treatment plan, and removes all worries.

• Enjoyment in revenue cycle management - you read that right. Practice Health Checks have given clarity that removes stress from revenue cycle management, and makes running your business more fun.

So you tell us- how will your practice benefit from a Practice Health Check? What are the ailments you’ve been feeling? What are your symptoms? What do you want to feel better about private practice ownership? Contact us to take your practice in for its Practice Health Check- the PWE will see you now.