As hospitals seek to improve collections for laboratory services, there are a number of front-end tools they can use to achieve success, according to Jeffrey Myers, vice president of consulting for Accumen and its subsidiary Chi Solutions.
Mr. Myers shared the following tip with Becker's Hospital Review:"With pending price cuts to the Medicare laboratory outpatient clinical laboratory fee schedule set to begin in 2018, hospitals can expect to see a 12 percent decline in reimbursement for laboratory testing that is reimbursed under the CLFS. While organic growth can mitigate this loss of revenue, other forward-looking strategies to improve laboratory outpatient collections include effective front-end tools, such as the elimination or reduction of manual billing for new tests not created in the appropriate information technology systems (i.e. laboratory information system, patient accounting system, etc.). Manual orders routinely are priced incorrectly, have incorrect or missing diagnosis codes, are assigned inaccurate CPT codes and are often non-covered or denied by health plans.
"Other areas of focus should be on laboratory claims that have been denied by payers. While the value of a laboratory encounter can be less than $50, the sheer volume of laboratory claims denied can be material to overall net revenue. Many hospitals have low dollar thresholds for automatic write-offs that could mask opportunities for enhanced laboratory collections."
To learn more about uncovering revenue sources through the hospital laboratory, click here.
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