Let’s explore ultimate Thanksgiving tips so that the providers can be efficient without having to sacrifice on their compliance.
Prepare Your Billing Team Ahead of the Holidays
The secret to the smooth running during Thanksgiving is the preparation.
Medical billing departments are supposed to draw a comprehensive schedule where they consider holiday leaves and the limited availability of personnel.
The American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) notes that claim rejections tend to rise during high-season holiday periods when billing departments are poorly prepared to handle them.
Do a pre-holiday meeting to check in on the outstanding claims, patient balances, as well as insurance follow-ups. Ensure that your team is prepared to deal with CPT and ICD-10 coding audits before the start of the holiday week.
Update Your Patient Communication Strategy
During Thanksgiving, Patients usually require information on coverage or claim status. Confusion can be minimized by proactively updating them regarding office hours, billing deadlines, and contact points, which will lead to greater satisfaction.
Use automated messaging or email patients before the holidays on how the billing process will be run.
The HIPAA rules state that all communication between patients should be safe and confidential, including billing notifications. This implies that even holiday reminders should be in accordance with laws on privacy.
Review Coding Accuracy Before Submission
Correct coding is necessary to ensure prompt reimbursements, particularly during the time of the year when insurance companies are likely to be slow.
CPT or ICD-10 coding mistakes may result in the rejection of the claim. To identify any possible errors and enforce compliance, the healthcare providers are advised to organize a coding audit before Thanksgiving.
Always first attend to high-volume procedures or complex cases for your healthcare revenue cycle and minimize disruptions.
Conduct End-of-Year Revenue Cycle Assessment
The best moment to look into the healthcare revenue cycle of the practice is at the time of Thanksgiving. Assess superior claims, rejected claims, and accounts receivable. Action plan, corrective measures before the end of the fiscal year, using insights. A pre-holiday financial snapshot will help reveal the trends, improve your cash flow, and provide your practice with a good launch in the new year.
Pro Tip: Pay attention to the top priority accounts, and remind yourself about the follow-up work. This will reduce the end-of-year surprises and make operations easier after the holiday reimbursement.
Plan for Pre-Thanksgiving Follow-Up
Proper follow-up before Thanksgiving would mean that your medical billing staff would have fewer holiday backups and that the claims would be filed in time.
You can avoid the last-minute pressure by going through the items awaiting your attention in advance, and do not miss out on follow-up before Thanksgiving helps your medical billing team reduce holiday backlogs and ensures that claims are submitted on time.
By reviewing pending items in advance, you can avoid last-minute stress and prevent delayed reimbursements.
Here are some of the key actions to take just before the holiday:
- Examine all outstanding cases and focus on cases that are of high value or complicated.
- Make follow-up with insurance companies on any outstanding approvals or denials.
- Contact the patients having unpaid balances or undocumented.
- Make sure that all CPT and ICD-10 coding is correct and completed before the submission deadlines.
Having pre-holiday follow-ups will help your team keep a good flow of work on Thanksgiving. You can be ready in advance to minimize mistakes, keep patients updated, make sure all claims are ready to be submitted on time, and keep your practice financially healthy around the hectic holiday season.
Consider Strategic Outsourcing for Holiday Efficiency
In high seasons such as Thanksgiving, certain healthcare providers consider strategic outsourcing of their billing operations to specialized medical billing services. This can assist in dealing with large numbers of claims and achieve accuracy in the coding in cases where there are insufficient in-house personnel.
With the collaboration of an efficient billing team, the practices will minimise the administrative workload, concentrate on patients, and avoid backlogs during the holiday season. Find vendors whose products are consistent with HIPAA compliance, CPT and ICD-10 codes, and telehealth billing codes.
Reflect and Set Goals: Plan for a Successful New Year
Outsourcing does not take the place of your internal team. But serves as a backup service to ensure your healthcare revenue cycle. That remains smooth when you need it the most. Thanksgiving is a period of reflection and a futuristic look. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on the development of your practice and formulate specific objectives within the next year.
Ask yourself:
- What are your short-term financial goals in one year?
- Are there ways of enhancing patient satisfaction by means of improved billing practices?
- What can you do to simplify things and eliminate as well as cut costs, and enhance efficiency?
Medical Billing Services would be happy to collaborate with you to create a specific plan. That would meet your objectives, be it to minimize the turnaround time of claims. Improve cash flow, or grow your practice.
Final Wrath: A Special Thanksgiving Message
Medical billing teams do not need to make Thanksgiving stressful.
Education of patients, planning, use of technology, and adherence to laws are some of the measures. That health care providers may engage in to keep the insurance claim management smooth and with accurate coding.
Staff health, effective communication, and accurate coding should be prioritize. So that you will not run out of money, and at the same time. You provide high-quality care to your patients.
The particularities related to submitting claims in California are a crucial concern to health care providers in the state. Medical Billing and Coding in California expertise should also be considering by providers interested in streamlining their practice so that reimbursements during the holiday season are accurate and compliant, and timely.
