Rising costs canceled surgeries and routine visits have all combined and created a dilemma for the financial crisis. Most importantly, uncertain reimbursements for COVID-19 has impacted the results from physician medical billing services. Longer lengths of stay in ever-more-crowded ICUs collectively impacted the financial strength of the physician practices and it has made it more essential than ever to ensure you are getting optimized results from physician medical billing services during COVID-19 crisis.
Not surprisingly, most of the well-known physician practices downgraded their financial outlook for nonprofit healthcare centers from stable to negative, largely due to COVID-19. The new Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) federal stimulus measures will certainly provide some relief from the financial loss. As federal organizations have allocated $100 for hospitals in this package that includes a 20 percent pay increase for Medicare COVID-19 patients and delays a planned 2 percent Medicare sequestration payment cut.
Yet, with an expected 10-day average length of stay for coronavirus patients, practitioners have become responsible for additional costs of isolation, protective equipment, and potential shortages of skilled healthcare providers driving up staffing costs. Moreover, we are still not sure to what extent this additional money will cover rising healthcare costs and revenue leakage related to the loss of elective surgical and other volumes. According to a recent study, it has been revealed that many hospitals could lose over $1,000 per COVID-19 patient and even with additional federal dollars.
Therefore, during such a crisis physicians should acquire the help of physician billing companies that can help physicians with professional business consultation and consistently follow-up with all paid and unpaid claims. In this way, physicians can ensure that they have a proper backup plan to optimize results from physician billing services. To this end, I have mentioned 5 ways providers can strengthen the financial health of their organization during the COVID-19 crisis.
Capture the information of COVID-19 from mobile charge capture:
Capturing charges at the point of care by using mobile devices is especially useful to manage the excessive workload during this pandemic. Providers can quickly capture the same CPT codes they normally would when treating patients for emergent coronavirus-related symptoms such as pneumonia, bronchitis, and respiratory distress.
Readily follow the medical coding guidelines suggested for COVID-19:
It is difficult for physicians to consistently provide training of the ongoing changes in medical coding to their in-house department of the physician medical billing services. However, practitioners should make sure that their medical billing complies with up-to-date standards to accommodate codes for diagnosing health issues- especially the new CMS diagnosis code specific to the virus, U07.1 – COVID-19. It will enable providers to readily capture the maximum revenue.
Enhance the tracking and reporting of patients:
Practitioners should make sure that they must have active solutions for physician medical billing services that give them additional visibility and insights into physician revenue cycle management. Doing so will help them better monitor the patient’s clinical progress and the resources that can be used to treat the huge number of patients.
COVID-19 patient cohorting:
Finally, organizations should consider adopting modern solutions for physician revenue cycle management in response to the pandemic. This includes partnering with a physician billing company that can help to support the financial crisis. In this way, physicians can pay attention to temporary isolation and quarantine units with expanded provider and caregiver rosters around COVID-19 patients.
As patient volumes grow and care delivery needs expand, health systems and physician groups will need to scale accordingly. By outsourcing physician revenue cycle management, physicians can maintain workflow efficiency and revenue integrity effortlessly. Ultimately, physicians would not need to hire a wide range of staff for physician billing services to make charge capture, data analytics and complying with the ongoing changes in the healthcare revenue cycle management.
These strategies can hopefully contribute to the success of physician revenue cycle management and ease the burden on medical practitioners. By partnering with a reliable medical billing company, providers can prevent avoidable revenue loss at a stressful time. Learn more about how do we help the physician to do their job better during the pandemic. Contact us! To request a free demo.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.