While filing claims, the chances of carelessly making a wrong entry or missing out on essential data are pretty high. If the same isn't double-checked to identify and resolve the errors, it leads to a severe issue during medical billing.
Payment Posting is critical for any healthcare business to maintain efficiency and healthy revenue while providing quality medical care for the patient. It gives them perceptivity about the revenue stream daily. Hence payment posting is an essential part of the organization's revenue cycle management.
What Exactly is Payment Posting?
Payment Posting lets you view the day-to-day payments while clearly showing the practice's financial status. The recording of payments in the medical billing software too is referred to as payment posting. There is a clear view of the insurance EOBs and payments collected from the patients and ERAs' insurance checks. It is essential to have a proper analysis to identify any leaks in the revenue and resolve them right away.
The different types of Payment Posting
We can carry out the payment posting in two different ways for medical billing based on coverage for the patients' insurance plan and their financial ability. They are as mentioned below:
Automated Posting –This is a highly preferred digital solution by many industries. It is primarily a software-driven approach and quickens the medical billing process, which aids in a healthy revenue cycle. Some independent physicians consider that they are having less control over their revenue cycle while using manual Posting.
Manual Posting - It is time-consuming, and the administration team fills in the information. There are high-risk rates for common errors in this type, which delays the payment posting.
Importance of Accurate Payment Posting
With the numerous steps of the medical billing process and the enormous number of daily claims, errors are higher. Payment posting is the vanguard to identify any issues of the payer and provides a trouble-free operation throughout to benefit the organization and help relieve the stress of the entire staff team.
An error in payment posting drastically impacts the accuracy of the claims submitted. When careful attention is paid throughout the process, the number of issues that could arise is greatly minimized.
Role of Payment Posting for an Enhanced Revenue Cycle
Regardless of in-house billing or third-party billing, payment posting is a crucial part of the revenue cycle. When a payment posting is carried out carefully, we can identify opportunities to increase the revenue quickly by following the day-to-day trends within the practice.
It is paramount to have an exact process, as payment posting will likely generate more revenue while streamlining the tedious medical billing process at ease.
There are six important ways to use payment posting to improve the efficiency of the revenue cycle by enhancing the medical billing process. They are as follows:
•Posting of EOB and ERA and Reconcilement-The insurance company could reject a claim due to insufficient or incorrect patient information. Even a small error such as a blank field or a mistake in spelling a name could easily cause claim rejection. If each recorded information is carefully double-checked to increase the accuracy and if an appropriate software for medical billing is used, you could minimize the errors.
•Denials of the Line Items–Relevant and proper documentation is a must for any insurance company to pay for the submitted claims, and they wouldn't hesitate to reject the claim if it has insufficient documentation. It is necessary to adeptly train the staff on the claims submission process and make use of the right software for medical billing, which helps in easy documentation check and submission
•Identifying the Denials-Due to a change in employment or other such reasons, the patient has no clue that a specific service is not under their insurance coverage even until the time of payment. It could be avoided by consistently verifying the patient's eligibility and benefits during every visit.
•Patient Responsibility–Specialty providers like Nephrologists find it annoying to file numerous claims at once for dialysis. It is tedious, and there are higher chances for errors. Using a mass claim creation tool can efficiently carry out multiple claims.
•Adjustments and Write-offs–In general, the patient has less knowledge about the medical billing and if any of the services they require needs referrals or authorization. They are not aware of out-of-pocket expenses. It creates an unnecessary commotion during the final billing time. To avoid such issues, it is better to discuss the patients' financial responsibility in advance.
•Handling the In-person Collection Issues–Inaccurate medical coding is one of the significant challenges and could be due to various factors. Choosing effective medical management, which provides coding automation, could easily avoid this inaccurate coding.
The Important Benefits Enjoyed by Utilizing Payment Posting in Medical Billing
Payment posting, being a pivotal step in the process of medical billing and an integral part of the revenue cycle management, offers the below benefits when carried out accurately.
• Recurrent Issues are Solved We can easily resolve the issues within the revenue cycle by using accurate payment posting. It does not limit posting the payments but can also resolve the payment adjustment and denials issues. Recurrent problems are solved when the specific reason for payment denials is identified.
• Analysis of Revenue Cycle Made Simple There is an excellent chance to enhance the revenue cycle and opportunities by analyzing each time payment gets posted for the patient's account. By doing so, the revenue cycle is greatly benefitted as the profitability and the various responsibilities of the account receivables department are improved.
• Tracking of Denials and Minimizing the Resolution Time Though time-consuming, tracking denials is a key feature to aid in driving more revenue. Through this feature, we can efficiently follow up on the denied claims and quickly recognize the prime reason which has caused the denial. By implementing a proper denial tracking service, the organization enormously benefits from minimizing the claim rejection rate while quickly resolving the issue.
• Enhances the Active Process Depending upon the healthcare service provider's competence, there is a significant impact on the organization's revenue cycle. But there are times when it functions to its most total ability while management emphasizes it less. The moment the issue has been identified, the administration needs to be more focused on solutions to enhance the precision and efficacy of the revenue cycle.
• Increased Accuracy of Claim Submissions to the Secondary Payers An accurate posting increases the accuracy of claims submitted to the secondary and tertiary payers. In case of inaccurate Posting, the chances are high for incorrect billing for the secondary and tertiary payers. It is necessary for the medical team of professionals to consistently determine different ways to improve several areas of the revenue cycle. While doing so, they ought to carefully and constantly track the entire process, which along with augmenting the reimbursements, also helps to comply with following the guidelines for accurate billing.