Critical Steps for Ensuring the Perfect Imaging Center Billing Process

The imaging center billing process can be frustrating. Converting your patient notes to numbered claims often introduces human errors. Any mistake in the billing process can cause claim denials, payment denials and poor cash flow. Even if your claims are approved, insurance companies rarely pay immediately.

To ensure an efficient imaging center billing process, you need to follow the step-by-step guides mentioned below-

Critical steps in the imaging center billing process:

1) Patient registration:

Your front-office staff should accurately capture a patient’s demographics, health insurance and other crucial background data whenever a patient schedules the first appointment. Collecting all this information is the first step of your imaging center billing process. However, when you do hear from them in the future, your front office team should confirm the most updated records. This way, you can easily avoid outdated contact and insurance information.

2) Insurance verification:

After collecting a patient’s insurance information, contact the insurance company to confirm the data. Ask the insurance company about the validity of the patient’s insurance. You should also ask about deductibles, copays, coverage and benefits so that you know how much to collect from the patient.

3) Prior authorization:

There are imaging procedures and diagnoses that require you to receive prior authorization from your patients’ insurance companies. Failure to obtain prior authorization can cause claim rejections and revenue loss.

4) Imaging center coding:

Once your coding team receives the medical scripts from your end, they will translate the imaging diagnoses and procedures into standardized ICD-10, CPT, and HCPCS codes along with necessary modifiers. Insurance companies use these codes to assess quickly whether they will reimburse your imaging services based on the patient’s insurance plan or not.

5) File your claims:

Most imaging center billing claims contain errors due to inaccurate coding, missing information, etc. You should scrub your claims to catch any potential errors and rectify them before submitting the claims.

6) Payer adjudication:

Once the payer gets your claim, they start the adjudication process to decide how much they will reimburse you and whether your claim will be approved, rejected, or denied. Claim denials usually happen because of coding errors. Claim denials often come with instructions on how to fix the errors. Using these instructions, you can quickly refile your claims and get reimbursed.

7) Pursue payments:

Once claims are approved, you should pursue payer reimbursements. Also, keep tabs on your accounts receivable to know which delinquent claims have gone too long. You follow up on aged accounts receivable until you receive payments.

8) Payment posting:

Successfully posting payments to patient accounts makes analyzing the revenue cycle much easier. Identifying and resolving the common reasons for denials helps prevent future claims from being rejected for the same issues.

To avoid any potential mistake in the overall imaging center billing process, most imaging practices outsource their billing job to revenue cycle management companies. A professional RCM company enables you to devote your time and focus on providing the best patient care by taking up your end-to-end billing process.

If you are looking forward to partnering up with the best imaging center billing experts, Sunknowledge is your one-stop solution. This company ensures that all your payments are processed without any gaps. Sunknowledge knows how to eliminate loopholes that extend your prior authorization time, causes claim denials, and drive your reimbursements as your reliable operational extension. Their experts are just a call away from you and get in touch with them to know more details.