Financial Health Archives - Currence, Inc.

How to Improve Your Practice’s Financial Health

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If you’ve found that your practice’s financial health isn’t where you’d like it to be, you’re probably wondering if you can do anything to remedy this critical issue.

As we’ve previously discussed, maintaining a financially healthy practice directly affects the quality of service you can provide your patients — though it may not feel that way. It’s common for practices to prioritize delivering high-quality patient care over “running the business,” which makes sense.

Without a reputation for providing excellent care, why would anyone look to you for help? Unfortunately, putting your financial health on the back burner can lead to scenarios which directly affect your patients’ well-being, like lacking the consistent revenue stream to hire more medical professionals to provide care to a growing roster of patients. Providing exceptional patient care and maintaining a financially healthy practice isn’t an either/or proposition; they truly go hand-in-hand.

Fortunately, improving your collections is not a herculean task — providing you use the right tools.

The first step to improving your practice’s financial health is to gain a solid understanding of your revenue data. How can you do this? If you don’t already use a financial analytics dashboard, you should consider implementing one into your billing process. A top of the line system provides information that helps you understand where you’re falling behind and improve your billing.

What is a Financial Analytics Dashboard?

A financial analytics dashboard tracks:

All the financial data that comes in to your practice
The time it takes to receive the revenue
Which insurance companies are efficient in paying you and those that aren’t

A good financial analytics dashboard will take this intel and turn it into actionable analyses and reports. With a dashboard you’ll be able to discover sticking points in your billing practices and understand how to resolve issues causing your practice to lose revenue.

The dashboard allows you to break out of mediocre billing practices. For example, below are some key figures for how practices using our financial analytics dashboard perform in comparison to the industry national averages.

Averages number of days charges are in accounts receivable:

Industry: 35 days
Currence: 24 days

Percentage of charges in accounts receivable over 120 days:

Industry: 18%
Currence: 12%

Percentage of claims paid the first time submitted:

Industry: 85%
Currence: 97%

As you can see, our dashboard allows practices to get the insight necessary to pinpoint gaps in their billing practices. The reports and analytics we provide help organizations make data-driven decisions, rather than act like a cart on square wheels, trying to desperately increase revenue without employing the right tools for the job.

Click here to learn more about how the right financial analytics dashboard can have a huge impact on your practice.

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Addressing the Financial Health of Your Medical Practice

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Maintaining a financially healthy medical practice is important for many reasons.

On the most basic of levels, it allows you to keep the doors open. You can retain employees, keep morale high and remove the headaches associated with worrying about money month to month. Most importantly, though, it allows you to better serve your patients.

How so? A financially healthy practice is able to plan long-term for future needs. With a secure, stable revenue stream, you can do things like hire more employees, improve your facilities, invest in new technology, and offer more development opportunities for staff.

Of course, this revenue is all tied back into the rate at which a practice receives payments from insurance companies. The longer charges stay in accounts receivable, the longer it takes your practice to get paid for the services performed. Ideally, your practice should only have to submit a claim to insurance once for it to then be paid, but this isn’t always the case.

So where does your organization stand? To help you get a better grasp on where your organization stands, look at these key questions and national averages below.

How many days of charges are in accounts receivable?

The average practice has charges in accounts receivable for 35 days. Remember, the higher the number of days, the longer it takes for you to be compensated for your work. If your number is 35 or higher, then you need to begin taking steps right now to lower it. Even if you are below 35, there are most likely opportunities for you to lower your days in accounts receivable to be even fewer.

What percentage of your accounts receivable is over 120 days?

In an average practice, 18% of claims have been in accounts receivable for over 120 days. Claims unpaid after 120 days require additional, urgent attention in order to receive payment, creating more work and slowing down your practice.

What percentage of claims are paid on first submission?

The average first claim pass rate is 85%. If you are regularly resubmitting claims multiple times, then it’s time to pinpoint and rectify the reason insurance keeps refusing payment.

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