Practice Management Alert

Your office may never have enough employees to run a tight ship, but with these organizational skills you can at least get the most out of your understaffed workforce.

Even offices scraping the bottom of the barrel can improve their office productivity with realistic goals and effective trimming. Make good with what you've got: Turn your resources into assets with a multi-faceted game plan, says Jennifer Darling, compliance officer, insurance & collection specialist and owner of BBC Medical Management Services in Dallas.

You must begin, above all, with timely filed claims, Darling says. Your office should be filing claims daily, and if not, no less than once a week. The faster you get the claims out, the sooner the money comes in or the sooner you can appeal the denials, Darling says.

Here are nine additional proactive steps to improve how quickly your office gets claims out the door, whether for the first time or in response to a denial: 1. Split your task force into groups, Darling says. Collections: Working the AR reports and handling patient accounts (30 percent of employee resources). Charge posting and auditing: Verifying accuracy of charges and high-level physician visits as well as correct diagnoses and procedures (30 percent). Receivables: Posting EOBs and write-offs, tracking denials and forwarding incorrect payments and denials to the collection group (20 percent). Special projects and other tasks suitable for your office (20 percent). Consider separating out the patient-due portion of collections from other tasks, one billing expert suggests. When people focus on a specific task and don't "change gears," they increase productivity, he says. 2. Hire educated and aggressive coders. You want coding professionals either coders, biller, or both who encourage and assist physicians to code correctly. Make sure your coders are also qualified and understand the importance of coding and that they are "detail-oriented people," Darling insists. With educated and determined coders, you'll file clean and accurate claims the first time, which cuts at least 40 percent of unnecessary work from the collection process.

Assign each coding professional to a group of doctors and arrange coders by specialty, she says. If your coders know the idiosyncrasies of the physician and specialty, you've mastered a "large player" in claim payments, Darling says. Assign one-fourth to one-half of your coding professionals to review the dictation, and make sure billing matches documentation before claims get sent out, she adds. 3. Assign each employee to the position that fits her skills and your needs best. If you don't have the luxury of hiring new staff, make sure each of your current staff members is well placed, Darling says. If you reorganize or review the team for the reallocating positions, have each employee [...]