In the recent healthcare landscape, revenue cycle automation is stepping up as a significant piece to running successful healthcare practices. Automation streamlines the processes within healthcare revenue management, which leads to improved financial performance. Experian Health conducted a survey in June 2022 of over 200 medical billing staff involved at critical points in the revenue cycle and found significant reductions in claim denials following the implementation of automation within the revenue cycle.

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Automating Key Steps in the Revenue Cycle

Certain steps in the healthcare revenue cycle are more inclined to automation. These generally include those heavily reliant on data entry, data verification, and repetitive administrative tasks. For instance, patient registration, insurance eligibility verification, coding, claim submission, and payment posting can all be made more efficient and less error-prone through automation.

Specifically, insurance eligibility verification, often a time-consuming task, can be seamlessly automated to reduce administrative burden and improve accuracy. Automation can take different approaches, and in the case of pMD’s pDemographics service, it relies on AI to first obtain missing demographic data for patients, before automatically verifying eligibility. Similarly, the automation of claim submission can help avoid delays, while automated payment posting can expedite the final phase of the revenue cycle.

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An Example of Effective Revenue Cycle Automation

An example of effective automation can be seen in Minnesota Oncology. After implementing pMD as the charge capture solution for their revenue cycle, the institution saw a 19% increase on average in inpatient revenue year-over-year after automating the process of transferring charges from pMD into their practice management software. The time saved by the billing team through automation enabled the practice to reallocate staff to focus on resolving higher-value claim denials and further increase revenue.

In a period where the financial health of healthcare institutions is as critical as the physical well-being of the patients they serve, revenue cycle automation is not just another tech buzzword. Automation is crucial to ensuring robust financial health while delivering superior patient care.

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How pMD^® Can Help

At pMD^®, our mission is to streamline and optimize the patient care episode and the revenue cycle. Through our advanced, end-to-end practice management and revenue cycle solutions, we can help practices consolidate vendors, reduce costs, streamline workflows, improve patient care and satisfaction, and collect their maximum reimbursement more quickly.

Not sure what a vendor could do to improve your behavioral health billing? Contact pMD^® for a no-commitment financial impact analysis by our team of healthcare RCM experts free of charge!

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