Claim and payment errors, fraudulent claims, and rising administrative costs are different roads to the same destination: claims leakage. This is especially true for medical billing, which can be so complex that it creates an environment conducive to a range of different kinds of leakage.
But by simplifying your processing with the right medical bill software, you can reduce the chances of leakage by fixing and improving the processes that cause it.
Avoid Payment Errors with Automatic Error Detection
Medical billing teams often have to deal with inaccurate coding or patient information that results in costly payment errors. Without a system to identify inaccurate data, billing staff may also end up spending hours double-checking entries and trying to catch mistakes.
On the other hand, you can use software to identify inaccurate data automatically. By flagging instances of incorrect data, you can make sure bills get submitted for exactly what has been done. In this way, you can prevent overpaying due to an errant bill.
Prevent Missing Data from Driving the Cost of the Claim Process Higher
Each claim comes with a price tag, and one of the factors that nudges costs higher is labor. The more time your staff spends processing a claim, the more expensive it gets. Going back to fix errors due to missing data can easily consume several precious hours from a staff member’s day—and salary from your budget.
But with the right medical bill verification software, you can make sure you have all of the information you need upfront. For example, suppose a patient sustained a head injury and got treated for a concussion, minor cuts, and seizures. Your software can gather all of the treatment information associated with everything the patient received. If, on the other hand, the billing team had to manually enter the data, they may accidentally leave out a procedure or two.
Because your medical bill verification solution helps ensure all necessary billing data has been included, you drastically reduce the chances of having to go back and adjust the claim.
Leverage Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to Simplify Billing
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can capture data from text or images in scanned documents. It recognizes letters, numbers, and other characters, adding automation to the data entry process.
With OCR document data capture, you streamline the billing and claims processes by alleviating the need for people to identify and extract data from billing-related documents.
For instance, instead of trying to read and copy information from a printed document, a staff member can scan it and have the OCR data capture read it and automatically populate the medical bill verification software, resulting in a simpler, faster billing process.
The OCR process also gives you searchable documents, which can save considerable time when it comes to researching and verifying billing data.
To illustrate, let’s say a staff member had to scan 12 documents associated with a specific patient. There was then a question during the billing process about one of the treatments indicated on one of the documents.
Instead of having to go through all 12 PDFs and hunt, line by line, for the answer, they can put in a search term or two and find the answer in a matter of moments.
Track Medical Bill Indexing to Reduce Costs
Accurate medical bill indexing lies at the heart of an efficient, cost-effective claim management system because it aligns treatment with the billing process. If you can identify and track issues in your indexing process, you can uncover ways to reduce the costs associated with getting claims wrong.
If you use software to generate a medical bill indexing score that empowers you to quantify the success or weaknesses of your system. For example, suppose the billing department has recently hired two new people. By using the indexing score in your medical bill processing solution, you can keep track of the accuracy of the new employee’s entries.
If there’s a trend toward inaccuracy, you can give them the training they need—before any more leakage results.
By the same token, you can also use bill indexing scoring to identify those who are doing a particularly effective job. You can then figure out what’s working for them and train the rest of your staff accordingly. No matter how you use it, a system that quantifies bill indexing performance gives you timely, reliable data that reduces leakage.
Ventiv Verify gives you automated error and missing data detection, OCR, and bill indexing scoring, so you can use them to simplify your bill processing. With more accurate data and automated processes, each claim takes less time, and you reduce the likelihood of inaccuracies pushing the costs of claims higher. Chat with an expert to see how Ventiv Verify is right for your organization.
