Tuesday, June 14, 2011

How Not to Do It.

My firm is lucky enough to audit medical billing practices across the nation.  We have audited the gamut of billing companies from the small local business to the medium sized regional firm to the large national players; we also audit groups that perform their own billing. 
Often after reviewing the results of our audit with the practice the group will ask me; “is this the worse you’ve seen?”  It never ceases to amaze me what we find.  Here are some examples to help remind us that even though you think “everything is fine” sometimes you are just fooling yourself:
A practice that had a negative account receivable.  Yes you read this correctly, at the end of each month, according to this biller, the group owes money on their receivables!
A practice where their biller does not bill multiples.  Whenever the practice bills a cpt multiple times on a case only one gets billed.
A practice where their collection agency collects 33% of the amount sent to them by the biller. Somebody is not doing their job properly.
A practice where 20% of their outreach work in not being billed.
A practice that is paying 2% more than the going national rate for billing and their AR over 120 is at 23%!
OK, enough of this…I am always astonished when the group is amazed when I find issues like this as a result of our audit process.  The bottom line is simple; There is always someone out there doing it worse then you thought. 
Remember you are a business owner just like me, you have to pay attention to your shop and manage your business, if not then changes in the market and environment will eliminate you from the equation.

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