Offering financial education helps patients understand what they owe, why, and when. Physicians can get paid by educating their patients about their medical bills and making it easy for patients to pay them. Some patients avoid going to their physicians at least partly out of fear of huge medical bills – or just not knowing how medical bills work. One poll found 50% of Americans avoid medical care due to cost, said Taya Gordon, MBA, CMPE, CMOM, and chief revenue cycle officer at H4 Technology LLC, a health care support company. When that happens, underlying health problems can grow worse, leading to emergency department visits that add to costs, said Gordon. She presented “Reduce Revenue Cycle Pain Points by Improving the Patient Financial Experience,” during the 2022 Medical Practice Excellence Leaders Conference of the Medical Group Management Association, and is coauthor of the association’s publication “Revenue Cycle Management: Don’t Get Lost in the Financial Maze.” Gordon c...

  It’s important to set realistic expectations about the billing process, which isn’t easy to integrate into regular workflows. Billing is one of the most critical parts of running a behavioral health practice. This is especially true for large practices, as maximizing efficiency at scale significantly affects their revenue cycle. It’s important to set realistic expectations about the mental health billing process, which isn’t easy to integrate into regular workflows. To take on practice billing, clinicians must devote time to learning and accommodating new processes. This includes creating clean claims and monitoring them after submission, correcting and resubmitting rejected claims, negotiating denials, collecting payments from patients, and reconciling bank statements. If any of these steps are skipped, clinicians risk losing some of the reimbursement that is due. Expecting too much too quickly can lead to disappointment and possibly burnout, neither of which are conducive to co...