Slay the Dragons of Billing

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Dragons roast revenue. They destroy documentation. They fry your finances, and generally, mess up a perfectly good day.

These aren’t the dragons of mythology on HBO. These beasts are alive and romping around your office today — dragging down your billing system. Left unchecked, they pick your pocket with inefficiency, confusion and error.

Slay these Seven Dragons of Billing and rescue the bottom line of your chiropractic kingdom:

Communication dragon

Today’s chiropractic marketplace is a hodge-podge of insurance coverage and pricing. Insufficient communication with patients about their fiscal responsibility creates friction, and leads to unpaid bills and unhappy customers who go elsewhere.

Slaying this dragon requires a well-trained team that efficiently communicates those important details. It means the doctor must understand it as well and communicate with the team.

Feeback dragon

This is close cousin of the communication dragon. When there are errors — and there will be — technicians need proper feedback so they can tighten systems and procedures. Otherwise it just keeps happening and the dragons keep raiding your treasure.

Sloppy dragon

Poorly-trained techs combined with loose or vague systems lead to sloppy work. This is a particularly insidious dragon as it shows up randomly. You lose money every time patient demographics are entered incorrectly, or insurance information is not entered at all.

These are not complicated tasks, but they are details. The sloppy dragon feeds on details, or lack thereof, and he likes money.

Technology dragon

Your billing is dependent on software. How well do you understand how it works? Probably not as well as you should, because who has time for that?

The technology dragon keeps claims from going out because the settings aren’t right. It thwarts your tech’s proper input of information. It puts ghosts in the machine of your system.

Insurance dragon

The hated insurance dragon gets blamed for many things, and a lot of them are true. Changes and software updates including address or payer ID, billing guidelines such as codes and charges, third-party processors which can change the EOB/remittance information, requiring documentation utilization reviews, and changing authorization requirements.

While your head is spinning with rules and regulation, the insurance dragon slips away with more of your revenue.

Training dragon

The training dragon lives on the leftovers of his fire-breathing brethren. He shows up when teams aren’t trained on the standard operating procedures and when they don’t know what other members are doing or why. This leads to person-dependent procedures which are risky at best. The training dragon likes Mary, who’s been doing your billing for 20 years. He lurks around complacency and loves outright theft.

Training your team in multiple functions is the best defense against this horrible dragon.

Procedure dragon

Most dragons feed off mistakes and misunderstanding of the team members. The procedure dragon flaps around the head of the organization – the doctor. It’s a lack of standard operating procedures for financial techs, including collecting at every appointment, verifying and inputting insurance benefits, sending out statements, and scanning and inputting all authorizations.

Without strictly enforced guidelines for techs, things are going to stray. And what dragon doesn’t love strays.

Billing can be a vexing problem for chiropractors. It keeps you from doing the work you want, which is taking care of patients. It sucks time away from your family and community. And it gets more complicated every year.

About SIDECAR Chiropractic Billing Services

Our company was established by chiropractors, for chiropractors, and is still run by chiropractors. In short, we understand your challenges in the shifting sands of reimbursement. We are dragon slayers – a sharpened sword in a time of need. With a collective 75 years in experience, SIDECAR can offer proven methods for achieving a successful chiropractic practice. To learn more go to sidecaredge.com.