Clean claims and appropriate follow-up essential to bottom line

In many practices, money is being left on the table because adequate and necessary follow-up is not being done by the billing staff in your office. Having protocols in place to follow up on a claim will yield additional and well-deserved revenue. To minimize follow-up, the first “follow-up” procedure should be submitting a clean claim on the first submission. Secondly, an aged trial balance report run each month by patient name is helpful in identifying all unpaid claims. Thirdly, correcting claims before resubmitting them will avoid another resubmission. The fourth guideline for diligent follow-up is to keep track of and address all denials.