Cash posting or reconciling payments to the accounts receivable is paramount to the success of any DME provider. Pay attention and regularly review your cash posting process. Any issues can significantly impact your company’s success as cash posting directly impacts your revenue cycle management (RCM).
Rejected and denied claims, late payments, and incorrect coding can lead to revenue losses. Set up a process to routinely evaluate your cash posting process to guarantee RCM success.
5 Ways to Evaluate Your Cash Posting Process
Since your RCM relies heavily upon the cash posting process, it’s best to have a system in place to review the payment process routinely. Here are items you can use during your evaluation.
1. Review Staff Productivity
Make sure you have enough people on staff to manage the daily/weekly payment volume. If there’s more work than people, that’s when more mistakes can occur.
2. Provide Enhanced Training
Evaluate and make sure everyone is adequately trained and skilled for the exact role requirements. Check for:
- Accuracy
- Productivity
- Initiative
- Time-management
If necessary, current staff might need to be trained (or retrained) if they need help in the above areas.
3. Regularly Monitor Your Staff
Either you or a manager should routinely monitor the cash posting staff to prevent any mistakes. You can also:
- Separate duties when staffing distributions allow it.
- Review daily billing and collection records.
- Be strict about granting authority to give discounts/write-offs.
4. Avoid Bulk Posting
You’ll want to use a billing system that allows you to post payments on a line-item basis. Make it part of the staff’s routine to compare the two amounts.
Additionally, avoid bulk posting because you will have difficulty researching for that particular claim if there are any payment concerns.
5. Follow Up on Payment Discrepancies
Have a system in place so that your staff can compare the paid amount to the expected payment. If there is a significant difference, someone will need to follow up with the insurance company to verify the different amounts.
3 Ways Cash Posting Impacts a Company’s Success
Developing a consistent and daily cash posting process is essential for RCM for many reasons
- Resolves Recurring Problems – Identify claim denial trends and patterns. Determine why this trend is occurring and correct it.
- Increases Denial Resolution Time – Quickly correct denied claims and resend them to the payers since unresolved denials impact your accounts receivable days.
- Improves Current Processes – When there is a consistent cash posting process, it allows you and the staff to continue enhancing its effectiveness.
Medbill Can Help with Your Needs
Medbill is an industry-leading DME billing company with a team of people who can help you stay current on the ever-changing industry requirements. We can help you with all your “behind the scenes” activities, from document review to claims submission.