Billing and Collections

Many healthcare organizations are realizing that in less than nine months, ICD-10 will be upon them. Healthcare Finance News talked to some industry experts to find out where organizations are in the run up to Oct. 1.

The ACA has ushered in a whole new world for back-office management at behavioral health centers.

With the growing complexity and unpredictability of reimbursement, the existing back-end model of managing patients' payments is no longer sufficient. Hospital executives must focus on a proactive approach to collecting payment upfront as well as improving patient education.

The confusion caused by patient billing documents impacts providers' ability to collect on patient bills, so some providers are trying to simplify billing for patients in an effort to increase their debt recovery.

It's now possible to accept payments at the point of care with a mobile device by using phone add-ons like Square -- a technology more and more physicians are considering.

As hospitals continue to get squeezed by new Medicare penalties and shrinking reimbursements from private insurers, many are looking for ways to make up for that missing revenue, including picking up the insurance tab for poor patients as a means of collecting on bad debt.

Dual coding is probably the best idea to support the ICD-10 transition that many healthcare providers may not be able to afford. Here's why.

Deborah Essex of Aspen Valley Hospital explains how incentives led to increased patient collections for the Colorado-based facility.

Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services addressed several misunderstandings around ICD-10 in its "Myths and Facts" guide. While CMS debunked some of the most common ICD-10 myths, much of the industry is still confused about key topics.

The dental industry is not commonly considered a source of “best practices” for general healthcare reimbursement, but dental practices employ a number of strategic approaches that can be leveraged by other providers.