When humans are involved, mistakes are bound to find their way into a business. No matter how successful a dental practice is, the team can always improve in some way. Especially for practices that struggle, auditing your revenue cycle management can be extremely beneficial but also difficult to fit into an already tight schedule. Continue reading this post to learn why and how to make this revenue cycle management audit more feasible and dental billing more successful for your practice.
Why Should You Perform a Revenue Cycle Audit Regularly?
With multiple people and their families depending on your business, you can’t walk blindly and hope your finances will work out. An audit of your last revenue cycle (especially having multiple cycles) can reveal patterns of behavior or processes that can drastically improve to increase your cash flow.
What Should You Check in Your Revenue Cycle Management Audit?
Monitoring your revenue and incoming payments involves looking at the following factors through your integrated management software and using other technologies to collect information for you:
- Collection rates and on-time payments vs. late payments.
- The timeline of when claims are filed and paid.
- The number of denied claims.
- Accuracy of patient records.
- The number of pre-authorizations or verifications for dental insurance.
- Coding accuracy.
- List of inactive patients.
Once you understand where your practice is with these, you can gauge its financial health and efficiency and make necessary adjustments in the right direction.
How Do You Perform a Revenue Cycle Audit?
Fortunately, many newer software suites compile many types of information for you. However, going through the data and interpreting it to identify how your practice can improve takes much more effort and time. Fortunately, you can hire a dental services company to handle this extra task, which allows your team to focus on their normal work and taking care of patients.
How Can I Get a Revenue Cycle Audit Done Efficiently?
When your team already has a ton of work on their plates every day, working with patients directly, keeping the schedule full and going smoothly, etc., adding another task seems to add insult to injury. However, instead of piling on top of the tall stack of responsibilities for your in-office staff, consider outsourcing audits. An outside company may see flaws you’re too close to identify and may even offer services to help you be more efficient and effective in your processes and billing collections.
Audits of your revenue cycle management are worth having to identify where you can improve. With a better, more efficient process, you can bring in more consistent, on-time cash flow and see the success you want for your small business!
About Dental Support Specialties
For almost 20 years, Dental Support Specialties has provided remote administrative services to dental practices throughout the United States. In addition to answering incoming calls for your team and handling insurance verification, our professionals are proficient at conducting audits of your practice. These insights can be invaluable and maximize your revenue. Contact our team to learn how we can help!