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While there are a lot of pain points affecting family practice billing, finding solutions to these problems promotes financial sustainability and improved billing practices.
It has been established that medical billing plays an important part in the financial operations of healthcare practices, enabling providers to invest in resources, technology, and patient care. However, medical billing is a long and complex process that can be quite challenging. These challenges can lead to financial losses for family medical practice.
Family medical practices have to work harder to secure their reimbursement while treating their patients. This process can be difficult but can also be easily improved.
In this blog, Unify Medicraft will take you through the meaning of family practice with a focus on the pain points affecting family practice medical billing.
What is Family Practice Medical Billing?
Family practice medical billing is the process whereby all the billing processes from documentation, and coding, to claim submission for healthcare services provided by family medicine practitioners are done to ensure they receive reimbursement.
The duty of family practice medical billers is to make sure family practice clinics receive proper payment for the services they render to their patients. But it requires understanding all the rules of medical coding, insurance policies and procedures, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Difficulties for Family Practice Medical Billing
Shortage of Staff
Many family medicine practitioners fall behind because they do not have the right administrative staff to do all the necessary billing processes. When your staff is smaller than the workload, it is impossible to catch up.
Your cash flow is largely dependent on getting medical claims submitted and paid in a timely manner. Failure to meet this billing deadline will lead to losing payments for your services.
Lack of Timely Payments
We all know insurance reimbursement can either make or break healthcare provider practices. Their cash flow and revenue depend on payments from insurance companies, and continuous delays in these payments will make it difficult to run their practice successfully.
Lack of Billing Tools
Family medicine practitioners who still use manual; revenue cycle management face a lot of challenges with their medical billing. They need to enter medical claims individually and also research their codes. If their claim is denied, they search manually for the errors one by one before resubmitting the claim.
Using a billing tool takes all the billing stress away and improves staff productivity is the solution. Adopting some of these tools will positively impact your family practice billing.
Changing Insurance Policy
Dealing with different insurance companies and their ever-changing policies can be challenging for family medical practice. Failure to comply with their regulations or slight errors in medical billing significantly influences the result. This also causes many issues that affect their practices and cash flow.
Some of the issues are listed below:
- Underpayments
- Claim denials
- Delays in reimbursement
Increase in Claim Denials
According to statistics, family practices often experience high rates of claim denials due to errors in coding, incomplete documentation, or failure to meet insurance requirements. All this can be traced back to the administrative burden on the staff, human error, and lack of the right medical billing software, like Unify Medicraft.
Different Ways to Improve Medical Billing
Manage Claims Properly
According to statistics, 80% of all family practice medical billing contains errors, and because of how strict insurance companies are about correct medical billing and coding, the claims are always rejected. The cycle of claim submission, rejection, correction, and resubmission often takes weeks. This means family medical practices have to wait for months before they can receive payment for their services.
With much wasted time and effort involved, it is important that family medical practice ensures their claims are accurate and complete the first time. The right information must be entered correctly, and claims must be double-checked for any possible errors before submitting them.
Reduce Administrative Burden
Transforming your family practice billing begins with reducing the administrative burden of your staff. Using software with an online patient portal can revolutionize your practice.
With features like treatment plans, appointment scheduling, and chat, your staff is not loaded with a lot of tasks every day. This seamless approach improves patient satisfaction and ensures a smoother billing process.
Outsource Medical Billing
Some family medical practices still do all their medical billing by themselves, which includes their claim processing. The truth is that outsourcing your medical billing to an expert will increase the likelihood that your practice will receive payments on those seemingly impossible medical bills.
Accurate Medical Code
According to the American Medical Association, incorrect coding is one of the leading causes of claim denials. Using the right code for all your medical billing can prevent costly errors and ensure a steady cash flow. Are you struggling with coding inaccuracy?
You should consider using Unify Medicraft to optimize your medical billing process.
Verify Insurance Eligibility
It is important for family practice to verify patient's insurance coverage before treatment if they want to avoid or minimize billing claim denials. Also, patient information must match with the one they are using for their insurance policy. Any difference in patient details will also lead to no reimbursement. Therefore, family practice must confirm patient information to streamline the billing workflow and reduce the likelihood of payment delays.
Increase Clean Medical Claims
Ensuring that your medical claim meets all the necessary criteria and is submitted without any issues that could prevent payment is essential to improve your family billing practice. By using quality medical billing software such as Unify Medicraft which offers claim-approval tools, you will significantly reduce reimbursement delays.
The Bottom Line
Increasing efficiency in your family practice is all about finding smarter, more effective ways to increase your revenue and grow your practice. With the heavy lifting task handled by specialized software, family practice can redirect their energies toward caring for patients. As a result, family practices are able to enhance both their operational performance and patient satisfaction.
Choosing the right medical billing software can transform the way your family practice operates. That is where Unify Medicraft comes in. Our software revolutionizes family practice medical billing with solutions that are not just efficient but also innovative.