Kick Off Thanksgiving With a Clean AR & a Stronger Year-End

As Thanksgiving approaches, it’s the perfect moment for medical practices to pause, reset, and prepare their financials before holiday slowdowns hit. With payer delays, staff shortages, and year-end billing pressure, this season offers an ideal opportunity to clean up your Accounts Receivable (AR) and recover revenue that’s been sitting untouched for months.

Whether you’re a practice in Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, or California, specialties like Primary Care, Orthopedics, Behavioral Health, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, EMS/Ambulance, Dental, Pain Management, and Urgent Care feel the year-end cash flow crunch the most.

This Thanksgiving, clearing your AR backlog isn’t just smart, it’s a gift of clean books, stronger cash flow, and fewer write-offs before the new year begins.

 

Why Thanksgiving Is the Perfect Time to Clean Up Your AR

Thanksgiving sits right before:

• Year-end payer deadlines
  
• Insurance policy renewals
  
• High-deductible-plan resets
  
• Holiday slowdowns in claim processing
  

Payers like Medicare and Medicaid become slower in late November and December. According to CMS data, 32% of claims submitted in the last 6 weeks of the year face delays or additional documentation requests, and commercial payers show the same trend.

Meaning: Old AR is about to get older and harder to collect.

Thanksgiving gives practices a natural checkpoint to pause, review aging AR, and recover the revenue sitting in:

• Old unresolved claims
  
• Denials that were never appealed
  
• Patient balances left unaddressed
  
• Unverified insurance
  
• Missing documentation or coding corrections
  
• Unposted payments or ERA mismatches
  

The Real Cost of Unmanaged AR

Across the U.S., medical practices lose $125,000 – $450,000 annually due to aged-out AR and preventable denials.

According to MGMA:

• 65% of aging AR (90+ days) has a recoverability rate below 20%
• 1 in 4 claims is denied, rejected, or underpaid
  
• 40% of denied claims are never worked again
  

This means practices in high-claim specialties feel the impact the most, including:

• Ambulance / EMS billing (high-volume, complex claim structure)
  
• Behavioral Health (authorization-heavy)
  
• Ophthalmology (modifiers, high Medicare utilization)
  
• Cardiology & Orthopedics (high-value claims, strict pre-auth rules)
  
• Primary Care (thin margins, high patient volume)
  
• Dental & Oral Surgery (payer-specific requirements)
  

This isn’t just a billing problem; it’s a profitability problem.

What’s Really Buried in Your Accounts Receivable?

Before cleaning up AR, practices need to understand what’s inside it. Common AR problems include:

• Claims are stuck due to missing documentation

Most common in ophthalmology, orthopedics, and dentistry.

• Authorization or eligibility issues

Especially for behavioral health, cardiology, and pain management.

• Denials never appealed

CO-29, CO-197, CO-50; you’ve seen them all.

• Underpayments hiding in plain sight

Commercial payers underpay up to 12–18% of claims.

• Patient’s balances were not followed up on

Particularly common in primary care and urgent care clinics.

• Incorrect coding or modifiers

Ophthalmology 25-modifiers, EMS mileage coding, E/M coding updates, etc.

• ERA posting delays

Unposted payments distort financial reports and hide revenue.

Your AR isn’t just “uncollected money.”
It’s a diagnosis of your practice workflow.

Clear the Table Before the New Year!

Just like families prepare their tables for Thanksgiving dinner, medical practices should clear their financial table by cleaning up their AR.

You don’t want leftover claims rolling into next year, especially when some may still be recoverable right now before the holiday slowdown hits.

This is your Thanksgiving clean-up moment.

What Happens If You Don’t Address AR Before December?

Failing to clean up AR during the holiday season leads to:

• More claims aging into 120+ days
  
• Higher write-off risk
  
• Greater administrative burden in January
  
• Delayed Medicare & Medicaid reimbursements
  
• Overwhelmed front-desk and billing teams
  
• Cash flow freeze during the slowest months
  

Commercial payer deadlines tighten, and by year-end:

• Some claims cannot be appealed
  
• Some require new authorizations
  
• Some expire altogether
  

Cleaning up AR now avoids the January revenue dip that so many practices face.

Key AR & Denial Statistics Every Practice Should Know

Area	Statistic
AR aging	46% of practices have AR over 90+ days
Recoverability	Claims lose 30% recoverability every 30 days
Denials	80% of denials are avoidable; 40% are never reworked
Medicare	Processes 1.2B claims annually; delays peak in Nov–Dec
Medicaid	State programs vary but average denial rate: 21–29%

Thanksgiving Offer!

“Celebrate Thanksgiving with a Cleaner AR & Stronger Cash Flow.”
This season, encourage practices to take advantage of a limited-time AR clean-up review, where Health Quest Billing evaluates:

• Aging buckets (30/60/90/120+)
  
• Top denial causes
  
• Recoverability opportunities
  
• Coding or documentation gaps
  
• Posting and payer trends
  
• Specialty-specific bottlenecks
  

How Health Quest Billing Can Help

While every practice has its own AR challenges, Health Quest Billing provides:

✔ A detailed AR diagnostic review

Not a generic audit a specialty-specific breakdown.

✔ Identification of high-recoverability claims

We highlight where the money actually is.

✔ Denial trend mapping

CO-29, CO-50, CO-197, PR denials, Medicaid-specific rejections.

✔ Coding & documentation insights

Especially for Ophthalmology, EMS, Cardiology, Behavioral Health, and Orthopedics.

✔ Strategy recommendations

Not a full solution only direction, not execution.

✔ Support if the practice wants full AR cleanup

Optional, not pushy a natural next step.

This approach allows practices to see their revenue clearly and recover it effectively.

Final Thoughts: Start the New Year With a Clean Slate

Thanksgiving is the perfect reminder to reflect, reset, and prepare for a stronger financial year ahead. Cleaning up your AR now will help your practice secure:

• Faster, more predictable reimbursements
  
• Fewer preventable denials
  
• Improved cash flow stability
  
• A clean financial start to January
  

If you want expert guidance, Health Quest Billing is offering a Thanksgiving AR Clean-Up Review,  a focused evaluation that helps you identify high-value recoverable claims, top denial trends, and opportunities to boost revenue before the year ends.

Ready to clear your AR before it becomes unrecoverable?
Health Quest Billing can help you reclaim what you’ve already earned.

FAQs

What types of issues commonly hide in aging AR?

Unworked denials, missing authorizations, incorrect coding, unposted payments, Medicaid rejections, and unresolved patient balances.

What if my claims are already over 120+ days old?

They may still be recoverable depending on payer rules but action must be taken immediately before timely filing closure.

How quickly can AR cleanup improve cash flow?

Most practices see reimbursement improvements within 30–45 days after working high-priority aging buckets.

How does aged AR affect my revenue?

Claims older than 90+ days have less than a 20% recovery rate and significantly increase write-offs and cash flow gaps.