How to Spot Inefficiencies in Radiology Billing Operations
Numerous medical specialties depend both directly and indirectly on radiology services. Radiology techniques help physicians to visualize internal organs without performing surgeries. These techniques help diagnose and treat various health conditions.
Certain conditions can’t be diagnosed without radiological intervention. These health conditions include various types of cancers, brain ailments, and much more. This importance in the health care system makes radiology one of the busiest medical specialties in the US. Also, radiology services have a high level of prior authorization burden.
All these factors make radiology billing operations crucial for medical practices. And so healthcare providers should immediately address any signs of inefficiencies in the billing process.
Doing so will help maintain optimal efficiency levels in the radiology billing process. Therefore, to help healthcare practices identify issues in their medical billing processes, we will discuss a few signs of inefficient billing operations.
Let’s start.
4 Signs Indicating Radiology Billing Inefficiencies
Accurate billing operations help medical facilities recover their dues on time. Any issues in radiology billing operations can affect reimbursement for radiology facilities. And so providers must be vigilant.
Here are a few signs that indicate radiology billing issues:
1) Decreasing first-pass rate:
A reduced first-pass rate indicates that claims are being submitted with errors. Due to errors, payers deny claims. As a result, healthcare providers have to correct errors and resubmit them. By identifying changes in the first-pass rate, providers can take steps to either improve or maintain accuracy levels.
2) Increasing claim denials:
Payers deny claims because of errors. These errors can range from billing & coding mistakes to data-entry errors. Such errors must be avoided at all costs. And to identify them, radiology billing teams should monitor denial rates.
3) Lengthy billing cycles:
Billing cycles become lengthy when there are errors. Errors cause denials & delays and require providers to fix mistakes and submit them again. This increases operational expenses and the duration of billing cycles.
Read more:
Navigating Radiology Billing Services: Essential Questions to Pose
4) High AR days:
High days in accounts receivables are a sign that bills remain unpaid for an unreasonably long period of time. High AR days could be a result of different factors but it is often a result of billing errors.
To learn more about our radiology billing best practices or to know more about how to improve the accuracy of your billing operations, please contact Sunknowledge Services Inc., a HIPAA-compliant healthcare revenue cycle management organization serving US healthcare providers and payers since 2007.
