7 Must-Have Billing Tools for Your EHR
A good EHR with the right billing tools can significantly aid in the management, consistent cash flow, and growth of your medical practice. Whether you are planning to update to a new EHR software or finding your first, there are several major billing tools you must ensure your software has. These tools will streamline your claims and billing processing, ensuring increased revenue and faster payments. In this article, we analyze some must-have billing tools for your EHR, and how incorporating the right medical clearinghouse can help you access these tools.
1. Electronic Submission
This refers to a document or manuscript that is submitted by electronic means. Your EHR must be able to submit billing processes electronically and efficiently. It might seem obvious, but some software doesn’t have this ability or the process is too inefficient. Having an EHR with a billing module that submits claims to all your health insurance payers easily is the first step towards faster payments. This software should also generate an itemized bill electronically for services offered to patients who pay in cash.
2. Claims Rejection Analysis
Once in a while, you’ll have numerous rejected claims for various reasons. It might be hard to identify and handle all of them one by one. Your software should be able to show a detailed report of all rejected claims. It should follow up with the reasons behind the rejection, such as incomplete clinical information, incorrect patient information, non-covered services, or wrong insurance information. Providing you with the reasons for rejection eases your work in making the corrections on the claims. This will ensure faster payments by enabling quick error correction and claim resubmission.
3. Report Management
Your EHR billing module should be able to run a billing payments and submissions report. This report analyzes submissions and payments based on individualized patients, individual providers, and insurance carriers. These reports should also be able to track payments received and billed based on dates and analyze them for trends. This is one of the most important billing tools to check for in an EHR, as they provide an opportunity to understand what percentage trends are being reimbursed after analyzing them.
4. Automated Billing Code Transcription
It is to make mistakes and, in fact, most billing errors result from human errors. It may be from transcribing errors and typos and billing codes. We can reduce the risk of human error by automating most of the billing activities. We can carry over billing codes, demographic information, and diagnosis codes automatically and reduce the time spent on error collection and hence, encourage fast payments.
5. Electronic Eligibility Verification
This is the prompt and accurate determination of a patient’s eligibility to receive specific health care services according to the patient’s coverage. It can be a hectic process to verify every patient’s details manually. Having an EHR with a billing module that offers a way to verify eligibility online can be very timesaving. This ensures increased revenue by saving on the costs of payroll and pre-qualifying patients before rendering services.
6. Electronic Payment Tracking
Effective software must offer a means to monitor all payments’ status. It should show the state of submission of a bill and when it’s under processing. It should also indicate when the insurance providers have accepted the bill, and after they have sent the payment. This aids in giving an estimation of reimbursement of services and helps in the management of financial resources.
7. Certifications
Before you settle on an EHR, ensure a federally authorized certification group certified the product. This is crucial for healthcare providers with a significant number of Medicaid and Medicare patients. Your company can receive cuts in Medicare payments or even lose Medicaid incentives in case you lack a certified EHR technology (CEHRT).
The certification requires you to meet the set security and interoperability requirements. Not all EHR tools can meet all those requirements. Hence, for large healthcare organizations that rely highly on Medicaid and Medicare patients, ensure you invest in certified EHR software.
What is a medical clearinghouse and why is it essential in choosing your EHR?
A clearinghouse acts as a conduit to allow you to submit claims to insurance companies. More than that, it allows you to check eligibility, quickly correct claims to avoid denials, keep track of outstanding claims to ensure timely payment, and much more.
Most of the time and money-saving tools mentioned above can be found in EHRs due to their integrations with clearinghouses. Thus, ensuring you are using the right clearinghouse is essential for ensuring you’re getting the most out of your EHR. Being that a clearinghouse integration is essential to ensuring your revenue, it is important to choose an EHR that allows you to work with a clearinghouse of your choice.
By utilizing EHR software with integrated claim clearinghouse tools, you allow your clients to minimize balances on accounts receivable and improve cash flow. This enables most practitioners to grow their practices and provide better customer service to their patients.
Choosing the Best Clearinghouse
As a healthcare provider, the clearinghouse you choose has a major impact on the success of your business and the financial effectiveness of your EHR. Choosing a trusted claim clearinghouse will take you a long way in improving your clinic’s or facility’s productivity. It will also ensure you satisfy all your clients with the services you are offering. Choose a partner that will help you improve cash flow by speeding up claim processing.
Apex EDI is a medical claim processing clearinghouse. We simplify your insurance claim process and help you get paid by insurance providers faster by eliminating errors and reducing delays. Our solutions work with most EHR systems seamlessly. Schedule a demo today if you would like to learn more about how Apex EDI can help.
