How Medical Collections Software Can Improve Your Revenue Cycle Management

It’s estimated that up to 80% of medical bills have errors, according to a 2016 report. Even small medical coding and billing mistakes can cause lost revenue, lagging reimbursements, and frustrated patients.

The medical billing profession is complex and dynamic. To start, there are more than 100,000 different ICD-10 and CPT codes which are reviewed and updated annually. 

Beyond common data entry errors, there are also more nuanced coding mistakes that can be expensive and damaging to medical practices. Unbundling codes, misusing procedural modifiers, and upcoding can all lead to a practice billing more than they’re allowed to. While these mistakes may seem minor, they can add up to major cash flow and revenue problems. Practices that misrepresent bills or incorrectly code procedures may be charged thousands of dollars in fines, and could even lose their eligibility to collect government payments through Medicaid and Medicare.

Investing in the right medical collections software is key to improving healthcare revenue cycle management. Your practice can minimize coding errors, maximize reimbursements, and improve overall revenue cycle management. 

In this article, we’ll review some of the key technical features you should look for in medical collections software.

Looking for more ways to optimize RCM?

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Key Medical Collections Software Features to Look For

Medical billing software helps practices improve cash flow, streamline operations, and reduce the burden of administrative tasks. With medical collections software, healthcare practices of all sizes can quickly track insurance claims, process patient collections, and generate accounts receivable reports.

Here are the top eight medical collections software features to look for to improve revenue cycle management: 
  1. Integrated Clearinghouse Functionality
    Integrated clearinghouses help medical practices expedite claims reimbursements. This important feature enables medical practice staff to securely transmit, correct, and refile claims all within one dashboard. Learn more about integrated clearinghouse functionality.
  2. Insurance Eligibility Verification and Prior Authorizations
    Checking insurance eligibility before providing patient care can help the likelihood of reimbursement. This key feature gives an extra layer of financial protection to providers while benefiting patients. With prior authorizations, patients can understand their paying responsibilities and costs associated with your services.
  3. Real-Time Claims Updates
    Integrated claims management makes it easier to evaluate outstanding bills, check claims statuses, set follow-up workflow reminders, and generate reports.
  4. Workflows and Automated Reminders
    From automated appointment and patient bill reminders to time-saving workflow automations, your medical collections software should simplify practice management.
  5. Seamless Electronic Health Record Integration
    You can minimize the chance of coding errors if you only need to enter them once into your practice’s electronic health record (EHR). When your EHR and medical billing software systems work well together, it enables ICD codes to be automatically transferred from your EHR to your practice management and billing software.
  6. Simple Online Payments
    A 2016 survey revealed that 80% of patients prefer electronic bill pay. Patients and administrators should be able to access patient statements electronically within your medical billing software. Patient self-pay dashboards help streamline revenue cycle management by giving patients the ability to pay outstanding charges with a few clicks.
  7. Customized Financial Reporting
    Quickly see the financial health of your practice with robust reporting. You should look for software that enables you to auto-schedule reports on a regular basis or pull custom reports manually as needed. Your practice management software should be able to generate reports for billing, reimbursement rates, facilities usage, patient trends, and provider productivity reports.
  8. Revenue Cycle Management Integration
    Hiring a dedicated outsourced RCM expert along with selecting the right medical collections software will help your medical practice maximize reimbursements, minimize coding errors and claims denials, and identify opportunities for revenue growth. Read our “Guide to Outsourcing Medical Billing Services” for more information.

Benchmark Solutions helps medical practices improve revenue and boost organizational efficiency

Here are the top reasons why Benchmark Solutions comes highly recommended by medical practices across North America: 

  • Patients enjoy access to a secure patient portal where they can message providers, view lab results, order prescription refills, request appointments, complete forms, and pay bills digitally.
  • Benchmark RCM users reduce AR to less than 30 days, achieve a 98% clean claims rate, and improve collections by 10-15% in the first year.
  • All clients benefit from a five-star support team across platforms.
  • Benchmark users streamline medical coding with built-in ICD-10 and CPT code recommendations.

Want to learn more about Benchmark Solutions’ suite of high-powered, intuitive, and customizable medical collections software, practice management, and revenue cycle management tools?