The Role of AR Follow Up in Medical Billing
When it comes to medical billing, the Accounts Receivable or AR follow-up is a crucial process that ensures healthcare providers receive timely payments for the services rendered. Some of these are; Follow up of all unpaid claims and addressing them to ensure immediate payments are made. This article gives insight into AR follow-up to clarify what it means and discuss the importance of related services.
What is AR Follow Up in Medical Billing?
The AR Follow up in medical billing is all about locating and recovering any unpaid claims. Medical practice managers believe that payment receivables are often delayed or even denied, leading to cash flow issues… As for this, follow-up procedures are provided to help cope with the unpaid claims, and there should not remain any opportunity to let the money go.
The process generally entails conveying insurance company and patient messages, rejecting or investigating claims for inconsistencies, and disputes or overturning insurance denials. This approach avoids payment complications and guarantees that all unpaid balances are processed promptly.
Why is AR Follow Up Essential?
However, with the complexity of a revenue cycle in health care, follow-up at the right time of implementation is of great importance. Failure to address unpaid claims may affect the cash flows for medical providers.
Here’s why it’s essential:
- Improved cash flow: Further follow-up also helps in chasing the account to enable quick payment on the various claims made, hence eliminating a long wait for the payments and thus improving cash flow.
- Reduced Claim Denials: Many claims are disallowed due to clerical mistakes that include wrong patient details or wrong coding. It assists in eradicating these mistakes before turning into larger challenges with follow-up.
- Increased Efficiency: Accounts receivable are frequently analyzed, and amounts due from customers who refused or delayed payment can be recognized and prevented in the future.
The AR Follow Up Process
The AR follow-up process consists of several important steps to ensure efficient payment collection:
- Claim Review: The first step is screening all open claims to check for any data entry mistake or input missing from the patient, coding, and documentation.
- Contacting Payers: If claims are not paid after submission, the team telephones insurance companies to make follow-up inquiries and resolve any problems.
- Denial Management: For denied claims, teams assess the cause of the denial and engage in follow-up activities like resubmission of the claim with appropriate information or appealing the decision.
- Patient Follow Up: If some services were not reimbursed by insurance, the team may send correspondents to patients about the outstanding charges, and all aspects of payment will be considered.
The Options for AR Follow-Up Services
AR follow-up process is also very beneficial for healthcare practices that do not have time or have no adequate resources to handle the services internally. Follow-up services, when outsourced, give the medical practice a team of dedicated personnel who will handle all the issues of account receivables. Some key benefits include:
- Expertise: The above services are from professionals who understand billing, claims, and denial of services from the medical field.
- Time Savings: A great advantage of outsourcing is that the providers are able to devote most of their time to the patients and not charting.
- Faster Payments: These services help providers to shorten the time of waiting for payments and enhance cash reconciliation.
Conclusion
In medical billing, AR follow up also has an important place since they hold the responsibility for making healthcare providers receive proper payments on time with high accuracy. Consumers may benefit from focused follow-up services as providers, attempt to decrease costs by consolidating their billing processes. In terms of cost savings for providers, the best course of action that can be taken is to outsource AR follow-up services this takes care of a provider’s billing needs while the provider can focus on treating and caring for the patients. If you are interested in professional AR follow-up services, Soho Tech Services provides services to improve the patients’ revenue cycle management and guarantee proper payment settlements.
