Anesthesia Billing Metrics
Posted by Michael Sigman on Wed, Mar 30, 2011 @ 08:55 AM
It is undeniable, as Americans we are obsessed with speed. How fast is your car, how fast is your computer, even how fast is our food. Which is why i can completely understand the obsession with speed of collections. However a word of caution when judging the performance of your anesthesia billing company. Speed does not always equal quality. If you are looking for a good meal, it is not always the fastest. Overnight claim submission. Overnight claim submission. While it is possible to speed through every claim, or send them out of the country, it may be wiser to have a claim touched by multiple people and double checked before initial submission. We all know the old carpenters addage "measure twice, cut once" This is also true with anesthesia billing. Check twice, submit once. One problem with speed metrics is that often times they can lead to unwanted behaviors. Sloppy claim submission and writeoff's of collectable accounts to get them off the books. The bottom line is, some accounts are problem accounts, period. I am not saying that days in A/R and percentage of collections over 90 days are not good things to monitor. Just do not monitor them in a Vacuum. You must have a way of measuring Quality along with speed. I can tell you from experience that the only way to measure quality is by looking at account activity. A regular random audit of 10 of your older accounts as well as 10 accounts that were written off to bad debt is a must. You should ask these questions. What is the date gap between activity on these accounts, and also what is the quality of the action taken on the account? Because if an account is worked regularly, with quality actions, there is one metric that I can guarantee will increase. Your bottom line.