Your front-office team may never submit a medical claim. They still have an enormous influence on whether that claim gets paid appropriately. Before a physician sees the patient, the practice has already collected information, verified – or failed to verify – coverage, identified – or missed – authorization requirements, communicated financial responsibility and created the data that will eventually travel through the revenue cycle.

An aging accounts receivable report can tell a medical practice something is wrong. It cannot always tell you why. When balances begin moving into older A/R categories, the instinct may be to focus exclusively on getting those accounts resolved. That matters.

Choosing how to manage medical billing is one of the most consequential operational decisions a practice can make. Keep billing in-house, and you maintain direct oversight of the people performing the work – but you also assume responsibility for recruiting, training, technology, coverage, management and keeping pace with changing payer requirements.

A medical practice can be busy, productive and seemingly financially healthy – and still be losing revenue every day. Often, the problem isn’t one dramatic breakdown. It’s a series of smaller gaps across the revenue cycle: an insurance verification that wasn’t completed correctly, an authorization issue, a charge that wasn’t captured, a coding problem that delayed a claim, a denial that wasn’t resolved or an outstanding balance that quietly moved further into aging accounts r