Anyone have his number? Our collection rate is plummeting. We are off over 10% in our collection rate (which was already abysmal IMO) from last year which had been fairly steady over the last decade or so. Last month we were off over 20%. Anyone else seeing this disturbing trend?
Dog the Bounty Hunter
- Thread starter Thrombus
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Not sure what you mean. You mean your % collection on your net charges has dropped 20%? That's bonkers. Something is wrong.
Off the top of my head:
1.) Make sure your net charges are stable, if your net charges are down 20% then you have your answer. You are doing 20% less work.
2.) If your net charges are down but your accession numbers are similar, then it might be a big problem with your billing company (happened to me). They may not be properly billing or line item deleting valuable CPT codes (follow on 88360s/88367s) because they cant figure out how to bill for them or got a few denials and simply gave up.
3.) Make sure your fee schedule hasn't changed. If you raise your fee schedule 20% YOY, then your net charges will be appear overvalued with respect your net receipts and your % collection will be off by 20% (because when you raise fees the only people you net are the self pay, who will often balk at a raised fee schedule these days).
4.) Make sure your payor mix hasn't changed/your contracts haven't changed.
5.) Make sure there isn't some big occurrence in your town, your local coal mining closing or some crap. People flooding onto COBRA plans can make for a nasty surprise down the road.
6.) Talk to other specialties in your hospital, specifically hospital based ones like Rads. They might be experiencing a similar situation and may have already thought their way out of the box.
give us some feedback too, I like to hear how these things resolve.
We have explored things quite a bit and most things are stable with the exception of the payors not paying whether it be insurance or patient. The hospital is experiencing similar issues especially with regard to the patient not paying their co-pays. We are hoping the 20% issue is related to the holidays but were still over 10%.
Our collections is down as a percentage of gross billings which is essentially unchanged other than what CMS did to us. Given that CMS hurt us at the margins losing collections % makes things go from bad to worse.
My only solution at this point is to find and employ Dog The Bounty Hunter.
Our collections is down as a percentage of gross billings which is essentially unchanged other than what CMS did to us. Given that CMS hurt us at the margins losing collections % makes things go from bad to worse.
My only solution at this point is to find and employ Dog The Bounty Hunter.
