Just a year ago around this time, the press and television media across the world featured the sincere and dedicated efforts of healthcare professionals especially the frontline staff—who were tirelessly working together to combat the effects of COVID-19. Healthcare systems were quick to innovate new strategies like telemedicine solutions, digital care coordination solutions, Remote Patient Monitoring Platforms (RPM), and hospitals beyond walls to extend care delivery in a safe and secure environment.

The Providers also faced major challenges amidst these innovations. The past year has been a testing time for the healthcare ecosystem. As recent policy changes were brought about, revenue cycle management companies had to integrate these new changes quickly.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has recalculated the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) for the calendar year 2021, which has had a huge impact on healthcare revenue cycle. Here’s a deep dive into some of the key strategies to transform the medical billing services in the wake of the COVID-19 era.

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Addressing the Emerging Challenges

COVID-19 has disrupted medical billing processes in unimaginable ways. The global pandemic has impacted every aspect of healthcare operations from accelerating digital healthcare solutions like telehealth platforms and digital patient engagement solutions. While major transitions were happening across the healthcare ecosystem, one common focus was to shift most of the remote operations processes. This was followed by the introduction of several codes to facilitate the medical billing and coding process. However, claim denials hit an all-time high with about 11% of total claims being denied, post the COVID-19 phase.

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Education and Training

Constant training and education to the medical billing team is one of the proven methods that have enabled success in medical billing services. The COVID situation has highlighted the importance of training and how it helps streamline the documentation process, while reducing claim denials and improving financial outcomes.

One of the methods that was implemented was to segment some of the questions into grids. Questions like—Did the televisits happen via Zoom platform? What were the required documents? Getting these details in a timely and orderly fashion could work wonders in the process.

Technology that Evolves with the Changing Times

Care coordination solutions and patient engagement platforms integrated with medical billing solutions have enabled providers bridge the revenue cycle gaps. Furthermore, the COVID-19 situation has fostered medical billing solution companies to create transformative solutions to meet the changing revenue cycle needs.

For instance, at SolvEdge, our digital patient engagement solution was quickly revamped with telemedicine solutions and other digital products added to our suite of the product portfolio. We offered a new telehealth solution option within our patient management platform and other virtual healthcare solutions to meet the unique and specific patient-provider needs.

About SolvEdge

SolvEdge is a leading Medical Billing company, offering end-to-end revenue cycle management services to our broad spectrum of clients around the globe. Our digital transformation and Revenue Cycle strategies are designed with one goal: Simplifying Healthcare financial experiences.

Reimagining healthcare delivery for our clients worldwide, our history of simplifying healthcare goes way back to 2004. Today, SolvEdge is trusted by our diverse set of clients including 450+ Hospitals, 3500+ Physician Practices and millions of Patients—by solving their most complex challenges and helping them deliver consistent, cohesive and collaborative care.

SolvEdge is headquartered in Chicago, U.S with its R&D and delivery centers in Chennai, India. We are a passionate and dedicated team of Doctors, PhDs, SMEs, technologists, analysts and others who work together to offer outcome-driven solutions that are best-in-class. To learn more about our tailor-made revenue cycle solutions, talk to our team.