In the revenue cycle, following successful Intake and Billing processes, the final and crucial step is Collections. This stage ensures that all efforts invested earlier lead to tangible financial returns, making it essential for a home-based care provider’s financial health. At this point, accounts receivable (A/R) are actively managed to capture every dollar billed, ensuring timely and complete reimbursement.
Prochant’s Collections Service is designed to manage every aspect of A/R recovery and cash posting, streamlining the process to accelerate payments and maximize the recovery of outstanding bills. Our team combines deep industry expertise with AI-powered tools to optimize each phase of collections, ensuring faster cash flow, reducing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), and minimizing the effort required to collect unpaid invoices. However, Collections is more than just following up on overdue balances; it’s about deploying strategies that prioritize high-impact accounts, resolve outstanding issues swiftly and prevent A/R aging.
An optimized collections process does more than improve cash flow; it directly impacts the provider’s ability to offer quality care. Every dollar recovered through efficient collections can be reinvested into resources, equipment and services that benefit patients. Additionally, staying on top of collections helps prevent A/R from ballooning and reduces the risk of write-offs, improving long-term financial sustainability.
Key Strategies to Maximize Collections
- Prioritize Accounts Strategically: Using technology, like Prochant Pulse, providers can score accounts based on factors such as payor, balance size and payer type. This scoring enables collections teams to allocate resources effectively, focusing on accounts that will yield the highest returns. Advanced analytics within Prochant Pulse also identify patterns or trends requiring special attention, maximizing the efficiency of every follow-up.
- Automate and Streamline Processes: Automation is essential in modern collections. Tasks, like reminder emails and follow-up calls, can be automated, reducing manual workload and allowing team members to focus on higher-value tasks. Pulse’s Connect platform integrates seamlessly with existing workflows, using automation to manage repetitive processes and ensure consistent follow-up without overwhelming collections teams.
- Centralize Invoice Management: The Pulse platform offers a streamlined Invoice Inbox to centralize all information needed for managing open A/R invoices. Previously, Collections teams might have had to toggle between systems to access claim statuses, notes and prioritizations. Now, with everything consolidated in the Invoice Inbox, teams can process information faster, saving time and avoiding delays. AI enhancements to this feature assist with note summaries and pre-call analysis, making it easier to handle high volumes of invoices efficiently.
- Focus on High-Value Invoicing: A key feature of Pulse’s AR Efficiency initiative is the High-Value Queue, which focuses efforts on the top 5% of patients with high-value invoices. Rather than spreading efforts across all invoices, this feature enables teams to prioritize cases with the most significant financial impact, helping to maximize monthly collections and shorten DSO. Additionally, Pulse now allows reporting by dollar amounts collected, not just by invoice count, so teams can better gauge the effectiveness of their collections efforts.
- Focus on Denials Management and Appeals: Denials directly impact collections, and a robust denials management process can significantly boost collections rates. Prochant’s Pulse platform includes an Appeals Assistant and Denial Prediction tool that flags claims likely to be denied, allowing teams to streamline appeals and improve overall A/R recovery rates.
- Monitor Performance with Real-Time Metrics: Continuous monitoring is crucial to success in collections. Real-time analytics in Pulse empower providers to track productivity, measure financial outcomes and identify areas for improvement. With metrics, like the percentage of total AR over 90 days, collections effectiveness rate and days in A/R, teams can make data-driven adjustments to stay on track.
Collections is more than a reactive follow-up stage. Rather, it’s the final link that secures revenue and ensures operational sustainability. By integrating technology, prioritizing high-impact accounts and using data-driven insights, providers can significantly improve their collections processes. At Prochant, we help providers optimize collections with end-to-end RCM solutions that blend high-tech tools with expert teams. Contact us today to learn how we can help strengthen your collections strategy and close the revenue cycle loop effectively.