Medical Payment

Payment Posting is one of the significant steps in medical revenue cycle management. It helps in stabilizing the financial strength of an organization in many ways.

Simply put, payment posting is the process of keying in payments into a provider’s record. It is an important process because it helps a provider have a look at payments at any time of the day and get a bird’s eye view of a practice’s financial position. It enables providers identify payment bottlenecks and strategize to avoid a repeat.

An organized payment posting process can benefit a practice in several ways. Some of these include, non-stop cash flow, resolves issues that k

Importance of Medical Payment Posting

The medical billing process consists of a number of steps, some of which are very complicated. In every practice hundreds and thousands of claims are processed daily. This can trigger a number of issues. Payment posting acts as the watchdog to spot payer problems. One can look into it can help identify issues such as non-covered services, denials for medical necessity, prior authorization etc. and because of which the practice has been denied a claim or paid in less. Once the issues are identified, the message can be passed on to the team to avoid a repeated repeating, resolve issues at early stages, and improve the efficiency and overall performance of a practice. The combines impact of this is accelerated patient billing and payment process. Further it helps cutting down on delays and weeds out possibilities of error that commonly lead to a delay. Both efficiency and performance also play a big role in improving patient satisfaction. It helps to control issues such as denials, eligibility issues, services that require prior authorization and keep the patient updated on each of these.

How Medical Payment Posting Improves Billing Process

Medical billing payment posting notes can make your billing process efficient in a number of ways. In this blog, we talk about the six tangible ways in which payment posting can help in boosting efficiency and improving revenue.

EOB and ERA Posting and Reconcilement –

ERA or Electronic Remittance Advice is an electronic report sent by insurance carriers to the healthcare providers. It contains details like paid claims, claim status, amount reimbursed. EOB posting medical billing on the other hand is the manual documentation of the same report. Both are based on agreements, benefits coverage, patient financial liability, copayments, splitting of payments etc.

As a practice, no matter how a report is sent, it must be ensured that every detail in the report matches the total amount paid by the carrier. Payment posting helps in ensuring this. It matches every aspect of the EOB posting medical billing and tallies it with the payment received to the nearest figure. The reconcilement helps the provider be on the same page with the carrier.

Line-item denials –

There are two types of denials in healthcare, namely full denial and partial claim denial. Line-item denial (LID) is a type of partial claim denial.  In this type of denial specific itemized claim are identified by the payer for non-payment and are deducted from the total claim amount. The remainder is paid to the provider as per the contract. Payment posting helps you identify the line of denial items accurately.

Providers can bank on insurance payment posting to know which services are getting paid, and which have to be borne by them.  Line-item posting is integral to payment posting process. It is important because it helps a practice to know when and how the fee schedule agreed with the insurance carrier is being violated. Likewise, it helps the provider know exactly the costs that have to be passed on to the patient to avoid a loss. Thus, it helps in identifying non-covered services and avoiding errors in the billing cycle.

Denials

One of the most important impacts of payment posting in rcm is identifying denials. Once this is done it becomes easy to rework and resubmit the denied claim to payers in a timely and efficient manner. A robust payment posting in medical billing can help you avert denials in the following ways:

  • Provide irrefutable proof that your claims are legitimate and have been wrongly turned down
  • Identify and present information that was overlooked by the insurance reviewer during the first round of review
  • Draw the payer’s attention to any misinterpretation, that has been passed off as an error on the provider’s part
  • Carry out end-to-end research on the background of the denial to make sure a resubmission or appeal stands ground.

The cumulative impact of the above can be an end-to-end check on leaks that lead to denials followed by ways to plug them. This can make the billing process more efficient and time-bound.

Patient responsibility

Patient responsibility is the portion of a medical bill that the insurance provider will not cover and have to be borne by the patient. Healthcare providers need to identify and move balances to patient responsibility for faster patient billing. Doing so helps them recover money from patients fast and reduce their losses. The challenge, however, lies in doing it on time. Payment posting makes this happen on time and in an accurate manner.

Write-offs and In-person Collections –

In healthcare, not all claims get converted into payments. In such cases the dues are to be written off. Payment posting helps a practice process write-off, and adjustments including contractual adjustments, and flagging such issues to authorities. Likewise, payment posting assists a practice flag issues with collecting deductibles and/or copayments both of which have a big impact on cash inflows.

A robust payment posting process helps keep many billing issues at bay. Consequently, it leads to improved collections. The secret to an efficient billing system lies in faster identification of problems. Payment posting can be used as a lever to zero in on bottlenecks, billing secondary payers correctly and appropriately apportioning patient share of payment. In many ways it serves as a great enabler to iron out kinks in the revenue cycle management process!

Who We Are and What makes Us an Expert?

This article is brought to you by MedBilling Expert, an expert service provider for medical payment posting services. We have extensive experience in providing back-office support for payment posting needs for a variety of healthcare practices. Our services are driven by a well-developed process and backed by insights from experienced payment posters. Get in touch with us now to know more about our insurance payment posting services.