According to many polls, by January 31, 2009 the majority of New Year resolutions will have already been abandoned. This does not mean that it should be a day of mourning, but rather it is the time to take stock of what needs to be done to reach the goals that were set at the end of 2008. It is critical to keep in mind two of the corner stones for achieving any goal:
1. Treat your set backs as temporary failures and not total defeat (i.e., just because you broke down and smoked a cigarette does not mean you should just say I failed on my goal to quit smoking); and
2. Create a series of intermediate goals between where you are and where you want to be (i.e., instead of "I will lose 50 pounds this year" focus on "I will lose 1 pound each week").
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- You can only achieve it by having a laser focus on the front end elements of medical billing. This is where the medical billing "game" is won or lost;
- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as "I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;
- Set backs position you for better performance tomorrow. How? You look at the claims that did not go out the door clean and learn what went wrong. Do you have a problem at the front desk with gathering demographics? Do you have a problem with training your data entry people? Do you have one physician that consistently codes incorrectly? Do you have one payer that really dislikes one of your common procedures?
- It lends itself to technology aids. Invest in a scrubber that will help you find coding problems before you submit the claims. Invest in insurance verification tools that will make it easier to have clean demographics. Invest in coding tools that will help improve your data entry performance.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Measure your current performance level;
- Set your medical billing goals high (96% of all claims will be paid on first submission);
- Break them down into bite size pieces (I will improve clean claim submissions by 2% each month), and
- Create a plan for how you will learn from rejected claims.
Implement these steps and you can achieve significantly better medical billing results in 2009 than you realized in previous years.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16890
1. Treat your set backs as temporary failures and not total defeat (i.e., just because you broke down and smoked a cigarette does not mean you should just say I failed on my goal to quit smoking); and
2. Create a series of intermediate goals between where you are and where you want to be (i.e., instead of "I will lose 50 pounds this year" focus on "I will lose 1 pound each week").
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- You can only achieve it by having a laser focus on the front end elements of medical billing. This is where the medical billing "game" is won or lost;
- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as "I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;
- Set backs position you for better performance tomorrow. How? You look at the claims that did not go out the door clean and learn what went wrong. Do you have a problem at the front desk with gathering demographics? Do you have a problem with training your data entry people? Do you have one physician that consistently codes incorrectly? Do you have one payer that really dislikes one of your common procedures?
- It lends itself to technology aids. Invest in a scrubber that will help you find coding problems before you submit the claims. Invest in insurance verification tools that will make it easier to have clean demographics. Invest in coding tools that will help improve your data entry performance.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Measure your current performance level;
- Set your medical billing goals high (96% of all claims will be paid on first submission);
- Break them down into bite size pieces (I will improve clean claim submissions by 2% each month), and
- Create a plan for how you will learn from rejected claims.
Implement these steps and you can achieve significantly better medical billing results in 2009 than you realized in previous years.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16890
About the Author:
You can learn more about the best practices of medical billing companies by visiting the ClaimCare Medical Billing Services Blog. Learn about achieving personal and business success at MyMerlin.net a new online mentoring site.
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