Payment posting primarily involves entering all payments into the medical billing software. It helps a practice view the overall payments received by it over a period of time. One view of the posting records provides a clear picture of the payments collected from patients, payments in EOBs, and checks received from ERAs. Such an overview helps in determining how revenue leaks are actually happening and ways to plug them.
A clean payment posting in rcm help providers spot ways to increase revenue. As payment posting can be leveraged to boost profits and make revenue cycle management more consistent, it is important to have a well-defined payment posting process in place.
Payment Posting – An Ignored Task
Medical payment posting is often treated by practices as a simple data entry job. It is because of this that it has remained an overlooked aspect of revenue cycle management. Today, dwindling profit margins have made payment a determining factor in the success of revenue cycle management.
Most providers have started to pay more attention to eob payment posting medical billing. As a result, it is no longer viewed as a task that involves posting of details in EOB from health insurance carriers. Today healthcare providers view it as dues that needs to be recovered from patients. Therefore, they have developed processes to streamline it. Large hospitals have dedicated teams to charge in appropriate patient account. The team is an integral part of the denial management team. They work together to recover sub optimal reimbursements from the patient
Importance of Payment Posting in RCM
Payment posting affects a number of departments in a medical office. This includes the front office to billing and claims. In the covid era payment posting became a bigger challenge for providers. Most practices couldn’t focus much on this critical part of RCM and had to face the consequences. In the post-COVID era practices need to improve these processes, and get better control of their overall revenue cycle.
A focus on daily payment posting will enable providers to spot and rectify billing and coding errors, before they turn into major issues. This enhances the accuracy of claims submissions to tertiary and secondary payers. It also expedites the time needed for resolving denials.
Healthcare providers who have managed to buck this trend have been successful in streamlining billing procedures, improving cash flow, and reducing staff burden. This has directly translated to improved financial performance. On time payment posting also reduces the cost of billing. This is because payment posting can be done electronically
Regular staff training is very important. The primary reason being change in rules and attrition. Employees should know how to read and understand EOB correctly. The surprise billing reforms is likely to increase doctor-patient encounters particularly out-of-network visits. This will increase the volume of EOB and amount of posting. Training staff will eliminate chances of errors. They will become more proficient in comprehending claims denials, underpayments, multiple adjustments, cross-overs, reversals and secondary remittance.
The healthcare landscape has undergone dramatic change in recent years. Modern day sophisticated technologies like automation, diverse payment models and advanced billing software have now made it easier for payment posters to handle a range of scenarios with greater efficiency. Therefore, the first task before providers is to embrace the most advanced technology.
Why Medical Payment Posting Automation is the Need of the Hour?
Automating payment posting will enable practices to automatically post insurance payments with ERA. In addition. they can post patient payments, post insurance checks from EOBs and even get receipts printed. This helps in making payment posting more streamlined. Providers can automatically post ERA, patient payments, insurance checks from EOBs and print receipt. The automatic update of these critical information help providers to reconcile their accounts, identify denial reasons, and decide whether to resubmit the claim or explore other options.
On a day-to-day basis, practices can have a clear view of the following:
- Overall claims paid
- Correctly paid claims
- Adjustments made for re-submitted claims
- Rejected claims
- Denied services
Intelligent payment posting automation makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to create an efficient, seamless, and scalable solution.
The OCR present in automated solutions, pulls out information from paper EOB’s and converts them into ERAs in HIPAA compliant 835 format. This facilitates automated posting and eliminates the need for human intervention, thereby reducing costs and improving efficiency.
Automated solutions also help to create automate workflows. The workflows can be customized as per practice needs. Practices can leverage the customized workflow to re-route denial correspondence and post ERAs. This helps to get the process completed with accuracy, reduce receivables days outstanding, and improve collections with fewer payment errors and write-offs.
Automated solutions also help practices to spot and route exceptions to staff for accelerated follow-up and resolution. Additionally, doctors can tap into the ERA and EOB data to analyze denials and understand, trends, billing work-in-progress, cash collection and team productivity for improved outcomes.
Practices can also automate the posting process to archive important documents. The documents can be accessed whenever there is a need by the team. This helps in creating a holistic view and enable 360-degree reporting. An automated remittance posting solution also makes it possible for you to allow your staff to work remotely. This is a critical requirement as in a post-pandemic world staff need to be given the freedom to operate from anywhere, they want.
Some Features of Automated Payment Posting Include
Auto ERN Retrieval
Electronic Remittance Notice is a notice provided by the payer that notifies the providers, billers and suppliers about how a plan has adjusted health charges. Posters need to download this many times a day. Automation obviates this need by automating the downloads.
Automatic Cash Application
A part of the posters job is to post the claims amount received on patient accounts and send a copy of the EOB to the patient. Automation helps to automate this process, including automatically applying patient responsibility balances.
Quick Payment Analysis
Posters need to quickly identify payments for which claims have been denied. Likewise, they need to access non-posted payments for further updates and review. All this can be a cumbersome task. Automation ensures this is done without any manual intervention.
Check Posting & Reconcilement
An important part of the posters job is also to know which payments are closed and reconciled. It involves marking the posting as closed. Automation helps to automatically track checks that have been closed and reconcile it with bank statements.
Automation also provides providers with batch payment posting solution.
This makes it possible to post multiple payments from one payer at one time thus making the process more efficient and quicker. In the same way, automation automates the process of batch balancing. This will inform you if your posting matches the check. This allows you to ensure all money is posted before closing out the batch.
Conclusion
Automating the payment posting process is a big challenge. The solution must be so designed that it is in complete sync with your existing process. Therefore, while developing a solution, you need to consider all critical factors that impact payment posting. These include capturing remittances, automatic linking of remittances and payments, capturing payments from all sources, short payment identification, matching open A/R invoice and handling exception. Only a solution that takes into account all aspects integral to payment posting can make your revenue cycle management process more effective.
Who We Are and What Makes Us an Expert?
This article is brought to you by MedBilling Experts a pioneer in medical back-office support services. We provide end-to-end back-office support services to healthcare practices based in the US. This primarily includes all aspects of revenue cycle management. One of the services we specialize in is payment posting. We are experts in matching EOBs and ERAs, flag issues with deductible and copays, spot denials and non-covered services etc. Get in touch with us now to know more about our payment posting services.
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