4 areas to watch to reduce billing costs
Getting paid can be costly for hospitals
Like all businesses offering a service, hospitals need to get paid. However, getting paid can be a costly proposition.
A hospital must work hard to process claims and collect payments and in that process risks wasting valuable resources.
[See also: Critical issues in healthcare billing]
Kyle Fetter, vice president of integrated care initiations with XIFIN, a third-party vendor that offers solutions to hospitals to help contain costs related to billing and determine how and where cash is being burned.
Here he points out four areas hospitals need to watch in order to control the costs related to billing.
1. Staffing. Achieving optimal staffing is key to controlling costs related to billing, said Fetter. Overstaffing can lead to spending money and using resources that could be utilized in other areas of need. Understaffing can lead to a hospital falling behind on claims and not getting paid in a timely fashion. “It’s an issue that implodes on itself,” said Fetter.
2. Technology. According to Fetter, hospitals do not take into consideration the cost of upgrades and customization of software for integrating with clearinghouses or payers once they’ve made the initial investment. And this is a mistake. “There is a very steady cost of keeping up,” he said.
Hospitals should not only focus resources on upgrades and customizations, they need to set money aside for maintenance on software. It’s something that is essential, said Fetter, because if software fails, back-up plans can be costly. “You don’t want to be submitting your claims on paper,” he noted.
Just as software needs to be upgraded and maintained, the hardware that houses it needs to be looked after. “These costs can be significant,” said Fetter. There are the costs of the hardware itself, but there is also the cost of storage. Hospitals spend thousands on off-site collocation centers to house hardware and data, Fetter said.
3. Integration. Implementing a cost-effective clearinghouse can help hospitals connect with payers and submit claims faster and receive quicker responses. That means they are paid faster and costly claim processes evaporate. “By connecting to a payer, you eliminate costs,” Fetter said.
4. Automation. Those hospitals that are not using automation to process claims are going to suffer, Fetter said. “When you haven’t set up a lot of automation, you’re going to have a high amount of claims that aren’t getting collected.” Claims fall to the wayside and aren’t submitted on time. It wastes a lot of resources, Fetter said. “You have to have a concise program.”
