Top 10 Challenges of Payment Posting in Medical Billing

Did you know that issues with payment posting are one of the major reasons for revenue loss in hospitals? Such issues are surprisingly common, and many healthcare practices unknowingly face them. You may also have fallen victim to the payment posting challenges. This blog will uncover their mask and explain how they can affect your medical practice.

We will also discuss some best practices that you can implement to overcome the challenges in billing process. A lot of other key aspects of payment posting are also covered below. So, read on to learn how you can become the best at payment posting.

Also, optimize your medical billing efficiency with our expert payment posting services. Get accurate, timely results for smoother operations.

What Is Payment Posting in Medical Billing?

Payment posting is a process in medical billing in which healthcare organizations validate their financial transactions and operations. You can also record the patient payments corresponding to the medical bills generated.

In this way, it provides valuable details about the insurance checks and payments of your patients. An accurately executed medical payment posting can maximize the overall efficiency and performance of your medical billing process.

How Is Payment Posting Challenging in Medical Billing?

There can be various challenges in accurate payment posting that can impact medical billings in healthcare organizations. We will look at ten such healthcare payments challenges, including the damaging reliance on manual processing, lack of insights about payment trends, and many more.

1. Manual Processing

Healthcare organizations have heavily relied on paper checks and other manual operations nowadays, which has significantly reduced their operational efficiency. The volume of paperwork and manual payment processing has been constantly on the rise.

You are more likely to spend a considerable portion of your work manually preparing invoices for medical bills than treating your patients. The extra work is a problem as excessive paper usage is harmful to your environment and extremely inefficient.

Your healthcare organization must be focused on delivering quality patient care instead of recording paper-based payment transactions. Instead, manual processing can lead to overdue payments as you cannot manage new cases and incoming bills.

2. Insufficient Knowledge

The current medical billing payment posting practices gather insufficient knowledge in terms of insights about the payment and spending trends of healthcare organizations. In this way, they render you ineffective in terms of developing analytics about the status of your medical billing process.

You are also unable to utilize that insufficient data to make informed decisions about your financial processes. This problem specifically targets your accounts receivable management as it is directly linked with the medical bills generated.

In addition, your staff can make more human errors as a result of manual payment posting and data entry. As a result, you cannot integrate an acceptable amount of valid data into your billing system. This downside takes up more time and effort due to operational processes yielding insufficient knowledge.

3. Long Payment Cycles

Electronic payments are still quite scarce in the medical sector as healthcare organizations continue to run paper-based payment posting services. Your payment billing cycle and revenue cycle management may have elongated over the years as a result of generating paper bills.

In contrast, other sectors have adjusted to the recent market trends and implemented automated systems that are effortlessly based on electronic payments. This difference is one of the key factors responsible for increasing your operational costs.

In addition, such an expensive and error-prone method is more likely to cause missed discounts and pending fees for your medical services. As a result, you may experience strains in your relationship with patients as you fail to maintain a smooth healthcare experience for them.

4. Inadequate Compliance Adherence

Healthcare organizations must align their medical billing with the set industry guidelines and regulations. It includes protecting crucial data about reimbursement medical claims and efficient payments through regulated compliance. Failure to comply can impact patient trust and induce fines.

Your current posting payments for medical billing may have made it too difficult to protect the Protected Health Information details of your patients. These details are vital for identifying patients managing their medical treatments during their stay in your hospital.

Manual payment processing often disrupts their protection as well as the reputed standards of your healthcare industry practices. These problems are vastly different from automated software that can ensure all compliance requirements are fulfilled in terms of billing invoices.

5. Fraud Exposure

Your medical billing operations may be exposed to fraud as a result of an unprotected payment posting process. As a result, a healthcare organization can be targeted with financial malpractices due to a number of different incidents.

It is fairly easy for unauthorized personnel to exploit your cash posting in medical billing in case of manual bill invoicing. Several complex fraudulent activities have surfaced that can only be bypassed through robust protection technologies.

Such technologies largely comprise an optimistic payment and data encryption due to the traditional medical processes. These measures are how fraud exposure prevents you from protecting the financial details of your patients and maintaining relationships with them.

6. Various Payment Options

Nowadays, several payment options are available in the healthcare sector to fulfill reimbursement claims. Healthcare organizations are notorious for using manual balance sheets to negotiate their billing terms.

With a high number of competitors for payment services, your financial partnerships with your patients and their insurance billing operations have extensively diversified. This issue has complicated payment posting, as individual options rarely align with all aspects of your medical bills.

You must identify such aspects of your billing contracts beforehand and share them with your patients. In this way, you can ensure that your medical billing facilitates those payment methods while maintaining its integration with patient-centric workflows and cash flows.

7. Additional Staff Training

The transition to a modern payment system is also complex for healthcare organizations. It requires an additional allocation of resources, particularly staff training. You have to extend your organizational funds to train staff according to the latest payment posting trends.

Furthermore, you may also have to invest in a prominent technical solution based on the invoice-to-pay method. Its scope enables you to integrate your medical billing system with your patients’ preferred payment patterns.

In that case, you have to extend the payment posting training to effectively utilize that solution to automate your efficient payment posting method. Moreover, you may also have to educate your patients about accurately interacting with that specific workflow to pay the medical bills generated.

8. Lack of Transitioning Capacity

The current infrastructure of most healthcare organizations today lacks sufficient capacity to transition towards electronic payment posting. Certain payment trends taking over the healthcare sector may drive you; however, the lack of transitioning capacity is an issue.

You may not be in the ideal financial position to establish the necessary policies with your vendors. Such policies are important for setting up an automated cash posting for healthcare providers that can optimize the generation of medical bills.

In such a case, you may have to allocate further resources to onboard specific enrollment services of key suppliers. This operation is usually managed by automated vendors, and an effective execution can enhance the payment experience for your patients.

9. Meeting Reconciliation Deadlines

You may also have to meet certain reconciliation deadlines to ensure a successful medical billing process for your patients. While ensuring this, your staff may encounter difficulty in keeping up with the time and coordinating between different departments.

Such difficulties are certain due to the manual processing of healthcare operations. You may have to handle a higher number of transactions than the possible operational capacity. While executing all that, you may not be able to consistently reconcile with your deadlines.

In addition, payment posting may also require extensive reviews so that you can generate your medical bills while incorporating any necessary adjustments. Your practice management cash posting must be organized enough to report your financial findings with maximum coordination.

10. Chargebacks and Other Discrepancies

Healthcare organizations have to deal with several discrepancies, including chargebacks, on a daily basis. Resolving them can take up a lot of time, and you must handle them carefully to avoid any disruption in communication with your patients.

Chargebacks are specifically linked with financial frauds, and your financial standing may take a hit as a result of their prominence as well. In addition, your patients may also lose their trust if they have to continuously face chargebacks and other discrepancies.

Payment Posting Best Practices

There are a lot of best practices that you can perform to improve your payment posting process. Here are the major ones listed below:

1. Automation

It can be time-consuming and costly to manually post payments for your medical services. Therefore, you can automate this process to save the resources and time needed for your healthcare practice. Automation also reduces human errors and increases your accuracy. You can integrate automation with your practice through software tools and services.

They can use various aspects to automatically post your payments. Those aspects include credit cards, electronic remittance advices, online portals, and lockbox deposits. You can also use them to monitor and reconcile your payments. In addition, they enable you to generate reports and analytics and make better decisions.

2. Accuracy Validation

It is possible that some of your payments may be incorrect or incomplete. There can be various reasons as to why insurance companies are underpaying or overpaying you. They may also be denying your reimbursement claims without you knowing the reason. Some of those reasons are policy changes, coding errors, and contract disputes.

Payments have to be carefully validated so that they are accurate. You have to consider the contract terms, expected amount, and your fee schedule as well. Moreover, the Explanation of Benefits also has to be reviewed. This way, you can identify the reasons for your claim denials or payment adjustments. Discrepancies require corrective actions like appealing or refunding.

3. Follow-up

You first have to collect all the outstanding balances from your patients and their insurance companies. That is how your payment posting and reconciliation can be completed. For that, you need a proactive and consistent follow-up system. Such a system can track your unpaid reimbursement claims.

Moreover, dashboards, aging reports, and alerts can also be used. They can identify your overdue and uncollectible claims as well. Any issues or disputes can only be resolved by communicating them with patients and insurers. You can offer flexible payment options for your patients to facilitate quicker payments.

4. Staff Training and Auditing

Posting and reconciling medical payments require a lot of knowledge and expertise. Your staff should be trained and educated enough to follow the latest rules and regulations. There are some payer policies and coding standards that should be followed as well. Your billing professionals should consider the updated procedures for this.

You have to provide the necessary resources and tools for your staff to do that. Apart from this, hospitals can also audit and review the performance and quality of their billing staff. Then, use that data to provide feedback for them to improve their skills.

Types Of Payment Posting In Medical Billing

There are two types of payment posting in medical billing. They can be named as manual and automated posting. Let’s take a look at each of these types:

In manual posting, the administrative staff of a hospital has to manually fill out the payment details. Since every task is manual, this type usually takes longer than the other. As a result, you may face delays due to its problems. Such manual billing system problems can be caused by something as simple as typos. These specific problems are more likely to occur in manual posting.

The other type of payment posting is automated posting. Unlike manual posting, it can increase the speed of your medical billing process. It is based on a software-driven strategy that is more reliable in terms of revenue collection. Large hospitals usually use this method to have more control over their payment posting.

Apart from that, discover how demographic factors impact medical billing efficiency. Learn strategies to optimize processes and boost revenue.

Problems Of Manual Posting In Medical Billing

There can be several problems with manual payment posting for any healthcare organization. Here are the three major ones:

1. Data Entry Errors

A lot of errors can occur in the data entry procedure of manual posting. Your medical billers may make human errors while entering the payment details. These details can be about the medical codes, amounts, patient, and insurance information. Such errors can cause claim rejections and invalid postings. There can be billing discrepancies and reimbursement delays as well.

2. Time-Consuming Process

Manual payment posting also takes a lot of time as it requires attention to detail. You have to manually review the payments received by your practice. You also have to match each payment with the relevant reimbursement claim. The next step is to enter its details into your billing system. All these steps are time-consuming and labour-intensive. They consume valuable resources that can be utilized in other key tasks.

3. More Compliance Issues

There is a high risk of compliance issues with manual payment posting. These issues can be with documentation, billing accuracy, and auditing. You must implement automated validation and checks. If not, you may overlook important payment discrepancies and compliance requirements. In that case, you may have to face severe violations, fines, and audits that may damage your reputation.

Why Is It Important To Post Charges, Payments, And Adjustments Promptly?

Posting them is important for hospitals as it prevents mistakes and streamlines your cash flow. It also maintains your healthy relationship with your patients and their insurers. You can also ensure that your billing processes follow the financial reporting requirements. By registering your charges and making adjustments, you are able to make better financial decisions.

Final Thoughts

This blog sheds light on a range of challenges in medical billing that you can encounter while working on your payment posting in the healthcare billing process. We also learned how automated posting can save your time and reduce errors.

There was also a mention of staff training and performance auditing to make payment posting efficient. The blog also covered the issues with manual payment posting. Contact us today to prevent any of those issues and upscale your payment posting.