What are the Best Practices to Improve the Toxicology Billing Services
In order to sustain the quality of laboratory practice, it is crucial to keep your toxicology billing services on the right track. Because it is an integral factor that decides the financial stability of your lab business.
Therefore, laboratory technicians must continually look for more efficient and innovative ways to deliver quality care, lower costs, improve health outcomes, and improve lab revenue cycle management.
No doubt, the current evolutions in the healthcare industry have made the lab billing process extremely complicated. But, by implanting the right strategies, you can increase revenue, streamline business operations, and obviously support patients’ satisfaction.
Are you looking for innovative ways to tackle challenges in the toxicology billing system; here are the following proactive ways that can help you to improve the billing services of your practice.
- Become Patient-Centric
Every healthcare provider wants to see a fixed amount of patients during check-up hours. Because the higher rate of patients visits implies that there are more opportunities for revenue generation.
Therefore, you should spend a considerable amount of time with your patients. So they can feel valued and recommend you as the best healthcare provider to others. As a result, you will see an immense change in your patients’ volume.
Moreover, patients play a crucial role in revenue collection. Because you can lose a significant amount of revenue if your patients show reluctance in paying their medical bills.
Patients’ copays alone make up about 20% of a healthcare provider’s office revenue. Laboratory practitioners can boost their collections and improve time management by becoming Patient-Centric. You can do this in many ways, such as
- Transparent Medical Bills
One of the major hurdles in payment collections is complicated medical bills. You should make transparent and easy-to-understand billing statements. Because collections are positively impacted when patients fully understand their financial responsibility.
You should never use complicated language that is difficult for patients to understand and become a barrier in payment collections. Which slows down the toxicology billing services.
Moreover, your registration staff should check the patient’s insurance coverage before the consultation. You should be very clear with your patients who are on high-deductible plans that they will likely be paying out-of-pocket.
- Offer Flexible Payment Options
You should offer digital transactions such as credit/debit cards and other online methods. Your patients’ convenience in paying their dues will ultimately increase revenue collections.
You should make sure that your patients know every term and condition related to their financial responsibilities including co-pays and deductibles. Moreover, it is your responsibility to keep your patients updated with the dues by sending them billing statements and timely reminders when the payment deadline reaches nearer.
- Collect Accurate Patients’ Information
Accurate patient demographic information plays a crucial role in optimizing toxicology billing services. Because a slight error in this information such as the patient’s name, date of birth, gender, phone number, as well as insurance information, can lead to claim denials.
It not only affects the cash flow of your lab practice but also leaves a negative impact on patients. Therefore, you should hire well-experienced and highly trained registration staff to streamline the information flow throughout the toxicology billing process.
2. Avoid Coding Errors
Accurate medical coding is the first step towards optimized toxicology medical billing services. Coding errors can lead to claim denials/rejections and you may lose millions of dollars.
Moreover, correct coding initiatives are not only mandatory from a compliance perspective, but it is also crucial to maximize reimbursements. It is a complicated and time-consuming procedure. Therefore, you should hand over this responsibility to the certified coders, have in-depth knowledge of ICD-10-CM, CPT, and HCPCS level II classification systems.
It is the core responsibility of medical coders to ensure the correct translation of patients’ diagnoses and medical procedures into universal medical codes. They should make sure that every code is specific to avoid coding errors, for example, unbundling, upcoding, incorrect modifiers, under-coding, etc.
Moreover, the rules and guidelines of medical coding are constantly changing. If your coding staff isn’t aware of these changes and uses an outdated reference manual, the claim will be denied. Which hinders payment collections and laboratory practitioners have to face cash flow disruption.
Therefore, it is important for medical coders to undergo constant training, so they can stay up-to-date with the latest changes in the coding field.
3. Reduce Claim Denials
Healthcare providers cannot achieve their financial goals until they process medical claims efficiently. Because the success of toxicology billing services mainly depends on the submission of clean medical claims.
So, in order to avoid claim denials, medical billers should adopt the following strategies. Understand payor requirements and adhere to coding norms by staying abreast of the latest developments.
- Understand the requirements and guidelines of insurance companies.
- Prepare and submit the claims as per industry standards.
- Avoid duplicate billing.
- Double-check the claim to make sure that it doesn’t contain an error.
- Stop using manual methods to submit medical claims.
- Prefer to file claims electronically.
- File the claims before the due date.
4. Hire a Professional Toxicology Billing Company
In this challenging era, managing the revenue cycle management while focusing on patients’ care is not an easy task for laboratory practitioners.
However, by outsourcing your toxicology billing services to a trusted third party, you can achieve the desired financial outcomes. Because off-shore billing companies hold a dedicated task force, that shares a single purpose which is to boost the profitability of your laboratory practice.
They reduce the administrative burden of healthcare providers. Which enables them to focus on their patients. Moreover, they undergo constant training to stay at the top of the latest evolutions in the healthcare industry. They are also legally bound to ensure a high rate of clean claims, which ultimately optimize the cash flow of your lab practice.
Laboratory Billings is an eminent laboratory billing company in the United States. Which has been providing dependable toxicology billing services to fulfill your financial needs. Visit our website to request a free demo.