Reimbursements are a major concern for most urgent care operators. But it doesn’t have to be the case with you if your urgent care billing processes are optimized.
Recovering at least 95% of all reimbursements should be the goal for urgent care centres. However, as there is no need for appointments when presenting to a physician at an urgent care clinic, patient volume is incredibly high most of the time.
High patient volume and payers’ timeframe to submit claims make it very important to complete billing processes as quickly as possible.
To add to this, urgent care billing and reimbursement guidelines are more complex than those of other specialties. This makes billing errors more common in these practices.
And so let us discuss a few billing practices to increase reimbursement for urgent care centers.
Urgent Care Billing: Steps to Grow Reimbursement
The medical billing process usually starts as soon as the patient walks into the urgent care center. For all healthcare providers, medical care comes first.
And so, due to the continuous flow of patients and the need to deliver medical care quickly, urgent care centers usually have a lot of room for optimization in their billing processes.
Here are some steps to grow reimbursement by streamlining your urgent care billing process:
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Maintain detailed guidelines & operating procedures for different urgent care procedures
Case-specific SOPs on medical procedures, and billing & coding practices are extremely helpful for urgent care billers and coders. These documents help them clear queries while working on bills or claims and ensure accuracy. With these resources, practices can expect to cut down urgent care billing errors and increase reimbursement.
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Invest in Clinical Documentation Improvement tools to reduce errors & save time
CDI tools have become very popular because they help organize and manage documents easily. Research data suggests CDI solutions can cut down documentation errors by at least 43% for healthcare providers.
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Assign billing and coding tasks only to certified admin professionals
Urgent care billing operations are not as simple as that of most other medical specialties. The presence of hundreds of codes, and modifiers makes it almost impossible to maintain high accuracy levels without experienced billers and coders. By assigning these RCM functions to certified professionals, HCPs can minimize errors and grow reimbursements significantly.
Read More:
Outsourcing Urgent Care Billing Services- A Solid Boost to Overall Revenue
Discover the hidden earnings in urgent care billing! Correct coding could earn you over $124,000 annually. Explore more today!
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Perform billing and coding tasks simultaneously to ensure timeliness
Due to the immense billing pressure at urgent care centers, billing lags are common. But this can be avoided by performing billing, coding, and other RCM functions simultaneously with care delivery. This can only be possible with a separate team of billing and coding professionals.
To learn more about comprehensive urgent care billing SOPs that help us ensure at least 98% accuracy, please contact Sunknoweldge Services Inc., a HIPPA-compliant RCM company serving US healthcare providers & payers since 2007.