Mental health billing for practitioners can be one of the most arduous parts of your organization. From dealing with insurance companies to trying to make sense of your financials, billing can be a real drain on your staff; on top of that, a poorly maximized revenue cycle can cause serious issues for your cash flow. But never fear, you don’t have to go it alone. Here’s why you should trust your EHR with your mental health billing with Revenue Cycle Management services.
Entrusting your EHR with your billing can help take your mental health practice to the next level.
Revenue Cycle Management
Revenue Cycle Management or RCM is one of the most expansive and beneficial services an EHR with integrated billing solutions can provide. The process of creating and submitting claims to insurance companies is a large undertaking for a biller, let alone the fact that a good portion of insurance claims are denied requiring more detail or better data for payment. Outsourcing and automating that function can alleviate demands on your staff and, most importantly, aid in maintaining a robust cashflow for your agency. Diving into all of the components of Revenue Cycle Management, we can see the numerous benefits that come from entrusting it to your EHR.
Checking Benefits
Often, a mental healthcare provider first develops a plan of action for treatment and then retroactively adjusts per issues that arise with coverage. With RCM assistance from your EHR, you can check for eligibility and authorizations before beginning a course of treatment. You can also receive notifications when a patient’s insurance status or coverage changes. This will save a lot of head and heartache down the line.
Creating Charges
As mental health professionals, our mission is to treat clients and bring healing into their lives. But, running a mental health agency involves income and creating charges for services rendered. This process is not so easy to manage, especially with constantly changing billing codes. In fact, issues with coding are a common reason claims are rejected. Billers even have to juggle all kinds of codes: CPT, ICD-10, DSM 5…
Also, billers can sometimes undercode or overcode, creating a claim that doesn’t match up with the care provided. Using an RCM service with your EHR helps you draft these claims, making sure you’re charging for exactly what you should be.
Ultimately, this will help get money back into your accounts by reducing the number of denied claims and making sure you don’t accidentally sell yourself short to insurance payers.
Reviewing and Submitting Claims
Once your claims are drafted, your EHR can be there to make sure they are accurate and properly submitted. EHRs equipped with mental health billing will be able to enlist a clearinghouse to review or scrub claims before submitting to make sure they are error-free and less likely to be denied. They do say you should measure twice and cut once. The same goes for insurance claims.
Then, you’ll need to submit the claims within the appropriate time period, which varies from payer to payer. Just thinking of all that has to be done to make sure claims are properly submitted can give someone a headache. Let your EHR handle it.
Processing Payments
Okay, so maybe you’re submitting claims all on your own. An EHR can still help you process those reimbursements and follow up with payers to make sure they’re showing you the money.
Denial Management
And what if the money is nowhere to be seen? What is your claim is denied? Even with scrubbed claims, denials do happen, and fixing them is a grueling and frustrating task. With an EHR that handles your revenue cycle management, you don’t have to waste time and energy making phone calls and sifting back through documents to figure out what went wrong. Let your EHR’s mental health billing experts come to the rescue.
And, by using an EHR to handle your RCM, you can get your claims remittances electronically, speeding up the entire process.
Integrated Credit Card Processing
Another way your EHR can support your billing department is with a credit card processing integration. Credit card processing not only allows your patients to pay conveniently online, it can keep a consistent cashflow with minimal collections activities for your billing staff. When a client self-pays with a credit card, you don’t have to worry about bounced checks or tracking down non-payment.
And, credit card payments are posted within just a few days. With ship-shape accounts receivable and detailed transaction reporting, you can redirect energy that would otherwise be wasted. Plus, with money in the bank a lot sooner, you can improve the financial health of your agency and redirect those available funds to patient care.
Allowing clients to pay online is not only convenient for them, it can help keep your accounts up to date.
Detailed Reporting
If you’re already using an EHR, you know how beneficial it is to be able to access reports than can give you a bird’s eye view of your agency. These analytics can help you shape the future of your practice and help you make important decisions. When you automate your billing through your EHR, it’s very much the same.
Free Up Resources
Trusting your EHR with your mental health billing means your staff are freed up to focus on other initiatives. At every point in the billing process, your EHR’s billing services are taking small loads off of your staff’s shoulders. And those small assistances add up. In addition, with a team of experts at your back, you won’t have to train additional billers to meet demands.
Have Everything All in One Place
You already trust an EHR with so many aspects of your practice. By enlisting your EHR’s billing services, you’re bringing all of your patient care to one accessible log-in. If you’re ready to take your mental health billing to the next level, find an EHR that can help. Procentive’s complete billing solution, BillCare is designed to help mental health practitioners get more out of the dollars and cents of their business. Schedule a demo of Procentive’s BillCare billing services today.
