Crazy People Work From Home…

According to many polls, by January 31, 2009 the majority of New Year resolutions will have already been abandoned. This does not mean that it should be a day of mourning, but rather it is the time to take stock of what needs to be done to reach the goals that were set at the end of 2008. It is critical to keep in mind two of the corner stones for achieving any goal:

1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and

2. Break your goal down into manageable pieces (i.e., I will lose 2 pounds in January; 2 lbs in February versus I will lose 25 pounds this year).

These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year’s resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:

- You can only achieve it by having a laser focus on the front end elements of medical billing. This is where the medical billing “game” is won or lost;

- The goal is easily turned into a sequence of smaller more manageable goals such as training the staff on the top 10 date entry errors by the ed of February or achieving a 3% improvement in your acceptance rate by the beginning of April;

- Set backs position you for better performance tomorrow. How? You look at the claims that did not go out the door clean and learn what went wrong. Do you have a problem at the front desk with gathering demographics? Do you have a problem with training your data entry people? Do you have one physician that consistently codes incorrectly? Do you have one payer that really dislikes one of your common procedures?

- There are many tools available to help you achieve this goal. They include claims scrubbers, coding tools, training seminars and insurance verification tools.

Use the end of January as the time for a more informed New Year’s resolution for your medical practice. Today is the time for you to:

- Determine where you stand today (what percentage of your claims get paid on the first submission);

- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);

- Create a “goal ladder” where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and

- Create a plan for how you will learn from rejected claims.

This approach and focus can allow your medical billing efforts to reach new standards of excellence in 2009.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II