We know what you’re thinking, “Not another meeting?!”
But yes, that’s what we’re here to talk about. Another meeting. Or, perhaps, how to make the most out of a meeting you already have – your monthly AR review meeting.
Monthly AR review meetings are critical to every skilled nursing facility, home health, or hospice organization’s financial operations. AR review meetings help your organization ensure that you collect the money you’re owed, efficiently utilize your staff, and prevent any recurring billing issues. These meetings are one of the best ways to ensure your AR strategy is quite literally paying off.
If you’ve ever led an AR review meeting, you know that it’s easy for these meetings to stall out and become unproductive. So, how do you keep your AR review meetings on track and productive? Here’s how to get started and six tips to help you lead a productive AR review meeting.
Setting up an AR Review Meeting
If your organization doesn’t currently have an AR review meeting or you’re ready to refresh your regular meeting, here are a few ways to get started:
- Schedule your AR review meetings monthly to help ensure you’re making progress on unpaid claims and addressing recurring billing issues.
- Consider having your financial administrator or executive lead the meeting.
- Include all billing managers and any staff responsible for your AR in the meeting.
Tips for Leading a Productive AR Review Meeting
Now that you have your meeting schedule and the right attendees, it’s time to lead a productive AR review meeting. When preparing and leading your AR review meeting, here are six tips to help ensure you have a constructive discussion.
1. Identify Significant Accounts.
If your allotted meeting time doesn’t allow you to review all aged accounts, prioritize the accounts based on timely filing requirements, what has rolled from 60 to 90 days, anything over 90 days, accounts larger than $1,000, or accounts older than 120 days. If possible, have your billing staff work on these accounts at least once before your meeting.
Keep in mind that the accounts that continuously roll may not be getting worked or might be getting resubmitted for processing without identifying the root cause of the denial.
2. Have an Agenda and Planned Discussion Points.
A clear agenda is vital to ensure a constructive AR review meeting. The agenda should include reviewing your AR trends, an overview of your aging report, and the list of significant accounts that require review.
Here are some suggested account details you should plan to discuss:
- The reasons the account is outstanding
- An update on the progress made on the account since last month’s meeting
- Plan of action for receiving payment
3. Facilitate a Constructive Review.
The most productive AR review meetings result from extremely positive thinking regardless of the negative subject matter of aging AR. Work together as a team to stay on topic, guard against disruptions, facilitate a constructive review, and ensure a clearly identified action plan.
It can also be helpful to drill into the root cause of unpaid claims instead of breezing through progress updates. Try asking specific questions about the data presented to determine the root cause of any issues. Here are some example questions you can try:
If payment has been received, why is there still a balance on the account?
Validate your payer contracts and ensure that the correct rates are billed.
What led to the facility writing off all or some of an account?
Understand why claims were not billed on time.
Why are there credit balances on an account?
Are there issues with coinsurance being booked to the wrong payer, cash posting errors, or problems with Medicaid not updating?
4. Create a Plan to Batch Work.
It may be impossible to work all of the necessary accounts. Instead, create a plan to only work on three to five accounts per week rather than trying to tackle the whole list. Working on a smaller list of accounts allows you to track incremental progress and delegate responsibilities.
5. Split Out the Remedial Work.
The action plan identified for your accounts can require a great deal of work. Try splitting out some of the more remedial work, such as checking a claim status or gathering medical records to other employees. This will free up your medical billers to focus on resolving the claim issues.
Should you need additional help, consider outsourcing your old AR collections to a medical billing company to help streamline your processes and improve your reimbursement.
6. Follow-up.
This last tip might seem like a no-brainer. But, regular follow-up ensures that any issues or roadblocks are addressed and allows key stakeholders to stay informed.
Alignment, Accountability, Action
An AR meeting that is consistent and structured will help you identify AR trends, delegate responsibilities, and prioritize work so that your team is efficiently tackling your aging AR. Now that you have prepared for a productive AR review meeting, you can collaborate as a team to collect what you’re owed as efficiently as possible.
MCA – Helping Advance your Revenue Cycle Management
Our unique combination of highly-skilled billers, long-standing SNF, hospice, and home health billing experience, and our dedicated support team makes MCA a reliable partner to help support your most complicated claims. If you’re ready to gain more insight on AR best practices or you could use additional support, drop us a note or call us at 866-609-5880 to learn more about how MCA can help.
Together, we can pave a better financial future for your facility.
About MCA Medical Billing Solutions
MCA is a full-service revenue cycle management company dedicated to helping skilled nursing facilities, home healthcare, and hospice organizations advance their revenue cycle management. We provide claims creation, submission, and follow-up to Medicare, Medicaid, and all commercial insurers.
When choosing MCA, you can expect experienced business insight, skilled billing intelligence, data extraction and management, and cloud-based documentation. MCA is here to help you streamline your revenue cycle process to produce consistent, high-quality outcomes.