Payment posting is one of the most essential and vital parts of Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), directly impacting most other steps of RCM. A healthcare practice could be doing a fantastic job in treating patients. However, if it doesn’t analyze and keep track of payments, the practice will not be able to sustain revenue-wise. Revenue cycle management companies have to focus on their clients’ payment posting processes to ensure they are financially stable and moving forward, revenue-wise.
What is payment posting?
Payment posting is the process of accounting payments to help get a clear picture of the business’s financial image. Healthcare companies could have an in-house team handling the process of payment posting or work with third-party revenue cycle management companies. Either way, they need to ensure the team is focused on accurate payment posting, as this will affect the rest of their RCM processes.
When a patient pays from their pocket, the money is directly credited to the practice’s account. In that case, all that the payment posting team has to do is keep track of the payments received. When a third-party payer (insurance company) is involved, the process gets a little more complex. Claims are created and sent, and if claims are successfully reimbursed, then the payment is received. This needs to be accounted for and followed up. In case a claim is denied, then that entry goes into the ledger too. All write-offs and adjustments are entered here too. The revenue cycle management companies need to tweak their payment posting process based on individual client needs. The write-off limits and the adjustment cut-offs should all be decided by the client and done accordingly.
Many RCM experts feel that revenue cycle management companies do not give payment posting due diligence. These are more often a requirement that’s done as an afterthought.
However, there are so many benefits of payment posting that make it an essential part of RCM. Check the below points out.
1. Helps understand financial positioning
Every business needs to keep track of its accounts receivable so that it knows how much revenue to expect at the end of each month. Knowing the expected revenue will help plan expenses better. The same holds true for healthcare providers. As a revenue cycle management company handling RCM services for your client, it is important you monitor their financial stability and positioning with accurate payment posting, so they know where they stand. Accurate payment posting services help get this done.
2. Helps identify billing and coding problems
Did you know that by analyzing the payments posted, revenue cycle management companies can find out core problems in their billing and coding processes? As payment posting involves not just posting payments but also denials and adjustments it can give us insights into payer-specific Coding & Billing guidelines.
3. Prevent faulty patient statements
A negligible error in entering claim values may lead to incorrect patient statements. There can be two problems due to faulty claims entry.
a. The actual claim value could be much higher than the value entered, ending up in the practice not making the due revenue.
b. The actual claim value could be lower than what’s entered. This is going to lead to the payer denying claims because of exaggerated values or the patient having to pay more than they should.
By posting the claims accurately towards deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance, this process helps in determining the correct patient balance.
4. Send accurate claims to Secondary payers
Accurate payment posting of claims processed by primary payers will help in determining the balance that can be billed to secondary or tertiary payers and also prevent the secondary payers from denying the same.
5. Helps in effective denials resolution
Sometimes, claims may be filed erroneously, and minor mistakes can lead to them being denied. While a denied claim can be checked, redone, and appealed, the process is time and money-consuming. Did you know that smaller errors made by revenue cycle management companies while filing claims lead to denials, and each denial costs the client about $188 to appeal?
You can avoid all this with preventive actions. Make sure the claims are double-checked, and errors are spotted before they are filed. Accurate payment posting will help achieve these easily. When the payment posting is accurate, you can file claims confidently and maintain a shorter AR cycle.
Conclusion
An accurate payment posting process can help identify financial trends and find smarter ways to improve revenues. Revenue cycle management companies need to consider payment posting as an integral part of RCM and pick up valuable data from there for analysis.
Quintessence helps clients post ERAs and manual EOBs. Our payments posting team mostly consists of accounting experts with a natural flair for bookkeeping and recording. On top of these, we have invested intensively in tools that help automate payment posting and make the process more accurate and traceable.
Quintessence’s cash log platform ensures all payments are posted and the balance is tracked and settled. The great thing about all this is that we are able to do all this in narrow time frames while adhering to existing SLAs.
