Following-up with insurance companies in regards to late payments is a costly process, more costly than the industry previously estimated.
A survey conducted by Recondo Technology, a cloud-based healthcare revenue cycle solutions company, gathered input from healthcare financial professionals working in hospitals, physician groups and consultant organizations. Here are five key points from the survey.
• 70 percent of survey respondents reported the cost of follow-up per claim is $4, 33 percent higher than various industry estimates putting the cost at $2.75 to $3.25 per claim.
• 53 percent of respondents reported their organizations use manual follow-up methods directed by the 835 Electronic Data Interchange claim payment transaction set to assist in automated claims follow-up
• 12 percent of respondents use web-sourced data pulled from payer websites
• 4 percent of respondents use the 277 EDI transaction
• 31 percent of respondents use none of these approaches
"Not only is it costing the industry more than is currently believed to find problems within the healthcare revenue cycle and remediate them, but the vast majority of healthcare organizations are relying on outdated means to automate claims follow-up, outsourcing it or doing nothing at all," said Jay Deady, CEO of Recondo. "By contrast, exception-based processing that uses web-sourced data can immediately remove over half of soon-to-be-paid claims from the work queue, freeing up staff for more important duties and saving money for the organization."