Payment posting often is associated with copays and ICD-10 codes. However, the process involves more than entering codes and handling payments.
Payment posting is an important component of the revenue cycle management process. When it’s managed strategically, payment posting can increase cash flow and revenue for your practice.
What is Payment Posting in Medical Billing?
Payment posting is the process of applying remittances to patient medical accounts and reconciling those payments with outstanding bills. When a patient makes a payment on a bill, that payment must be assigned to the correct bill and patient.
It is important to manage adjustments and denials quickly to prevent lags in cash flow, because it takes time for a practice to collect payments.
Medical billing is a process that can last weeks or months. Billing errors increase that timeframe and complicate accounting and records. Additionally, payment posting errors can result in denials, confusion, miscommunication and upset patients.
Hiccups in the revenue stream negatively impact your practice. However, accurate execution of the payment posting process helps to prevent these problems.
Why Is Payment Posting Important?
Accurate payment posting benefits patients and your practice. Practice managers resolve issues that avoid upsetting patients or revenue loss. Accurate, prompt payment posting offers several benefits to your practice, including:
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Record Revenue Data — Accurate payment posting provides insight to the practice’s revenue and daily financial activities. Your office receives an accurate snapshot of your financial condition. These reports lead to informed financial decision making.
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Prevent Discrepancies — Successful payment processing in medical billing helps your practice catch discrepancies before they become problems that impact your revenue cycle.
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Identify Errors — Proper payment posting means your practice will identify payment errors before they become bigger problems. Institute weekly payment status checks to ensure there are no errors.
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Increase Cash Flow — Ensure there are no mistakes in your system to increase your practice’s cash flow and revenue.
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Catch Recurring Problems — Identify recurring problems in your revenue cycle by monitoring payment posting. Then, correct the problems to generate efficiency within your accounting processes.
Optimize Your Payment Posting Process
Monitoring your payment posting process increases your practice’s revenue and efficiencies. The most common ways to optimize your posting process include:
Train Your Staff
Are your front desk staff collecting the right copays? Are denials being resubmitted to the payer? Make sure your payment posters are properly trained with medical billing software and with your protocol for payment processing.
Special attention to training prevents any user error incidents in payment processing. Additionally, make sure your staff understands the latest changes to billing or coding rules, which will prevent complications with insurance companies regarding patient payments.
Identify Trends and Errors
Train payment posters in your practice to properly flag issues like prior authorizations or non-covered services for the immediate attention of the practice manager. Swift attention to problems or discrepancies expedites resolutions.
Use ERAs and EFTs
According to MedData, 85 percent of practices prefer using ERA and EFT payments. Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) are associated with electronic methods for practices and institutions to exchange payments.
ERAs are HIPAA-compliant electronic platforms that can replace paper copies of EOBs (Explanation of Benefits). ERAs reduce the amount of manually entered payments, which are time consuming and error prone. ERAs also are applicable to different benefits packages. EFTs are instruments for transmitting those payments.
Have questions about payment posting in your practice? The Auctus Group can assist you with assessing your revenue cycle management, including any concerns with payment posting.
