Payment posting in medical billing is an essential part of the revenue cycle management of any health care service provider.
Any practice can lose a significant amount of revenue if they fail to bill a patient. The payment posting process helps your practice to better analyze the current scenario of your financial management.
In This article, we will discuss the importance of payment posting in medical billing.
What Is Payment Posting In Medical Billing?
When any practice submits claims then they get a response from the insurance companies. The response may be in the form of approval of the claim or denied.
An Explanation of Benefits (EOB) has been sent to the medical service provider after the initial assessment. It gives you an overview of the current RCM.
Types of Payment Posting
Currently, there are two systems and it merely depends on the medical practice to which they follow:
-
Manual Way of Payment Posting
In this approach, all the payment is posted by the administrative staff manually. They prepared the posting, which eventually took a lot of time.
On the other side, the chances of error are also very high and posting may be delayed due to the negligence of the staff member.
-
Automatic Payment Posting
This is relatively an easy way to post the payment on time. An automated system will process the payment posting.
It will not only reduce the amount of time but also lower the chances of errors and a faster approach helps you analyze your RCM without any delay.
Steps of Payment Posting In Medical Billing
Receiving the payment from your payer doesn’t mean that everything is alright. You need to make your evaluation process done through payment posting.
A well-evaluated PP will give your billing activity a smooth flow and you can increase the overall revenues of your proactive.
- In the first step, you need to verify that the data from the EOB or ERA posting matches the actual payment.
- In the next step, you have to look at your claim denial ratio. Your medical billing team is responsible to manage all the denied claims and resubmission of claims after proper coding.
- For faster payment, move the responsibility to the patient if somehow they are liable in the matter.
- Give your input at the time of service on prior authorization, co-payment, denial ratio, and co-payment collection and deductibles.
Benefits of Payment Posting
Payment posting is one of the key steps in the medical billing process and it assures a smooth flow of your revenue cycle management system. Here are some other benefits;
- An accurate payment posting is essential for the maintenance of the accuracy of the secondary and tertiary claim submission.
- If the primary payment is not posted correctly then there are higher possibilities that the secondary and tertiary will be incorrect. That is where a payment posting holds an important factor in RCM.
- In the medical billing process, the chances of errors are expected. Payment posting in medical billing is not confined to posting payments but payment adjustments and denials.
- The payment posting allows the practice to take a deep analysis of the current revenue cycle.
- When payment is posted in the patient account, it allows the practice to evaluate the payment posting process as a whole, finding the opportunities for improvements and maximizing the revenues.
Evaluation of Payment Posting In Medical Billing
In This section, we will learn the complete evaluation process of payment posting in Medical billing.
Build a Team of Professionals
For an effective process, you need to hire members that are experts in medical billing. For managing billing activity, accuracy holds significant importance.
Your staff needs to be accurate in the whole billing process. Building a team of professionals that have good analytical skills and better evaluation power is the best way to evaluate the process.
Evaluation of Write-offs
Your billing team should avoid the bulk payment posting as it will later create difficulty in the evaluation process.
Also asks your staff to write special write-off codes to avoid any fraudulent activities.
Post Your Payments on Time
In the last evaluation process, you should make sure that you posted the payment on time. If It’s not done on time then your system will send a statement to the patient about the payment and you really don’t want a furious response from your patient.
How To Improve Overall Medical Billing?
For a smooth medical billing process, a medical service provider should take some measures. Here are some ways in which you can easily improve it.
Check Denial Management System
To make your revenues skyrocket you need to consistently monitor your denial ratio. There are multiple reasons behind the higher denial ratio some of them are:
- Claims are not submitted on time
- Any error in the documentation
- Coding error
- Using incorrect modifiers
- Duplicate billing
- Wrong insured bill
- Eligibility expired
Here are some of the most common reasons behind the higher denial ratio. Once you find the reason behind that higher denial ratio then try to resolve it within no time for the efficient billing system.
Build a Team of Professionals
Payment posting is not a regular entry job, it requires deep analysis to maintain the accuracy of all the processes.
So a medical practice should hire a team of professionals that can handle their day-to-day activity if they are interested in building an In-house team or you can outsource the services from the Medical billing service providers.
Have a Close Look At Changing Policies
Each insurance company has its own regulations and policies. Your billing staff needs to take a close look at all the required procedures so that any chances of error can be avoided at the initial stage of the billing process.
Use EHR System
An Electronic Health Record system is essential for a smooth billing process. It will ensure the filling of all the claims correctly with proper documentation, avoiding all the coding errors. It ensures proper record keeping which will lower the billing error.
Final Verdict
Medical billing is a complex process and by improving the billing activity you can ensure timely reimbursement and a smooth flow of revenue cycle management.
While It is an essential part of the medical billing activity.
Your practice can better analyze the whole picture of the revenue cycle by evaluating all the concerns in the system which will eventually raise its revenues.
