Most people's New Year resolutions have been abandoned by the end of January. If you find your self in this group then take heart. You can still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. To do so, you must understand two basic principals of achieving your ambitions:
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Break your goal down into manageable pieces (i.e., I will lose 2 pounds in January; 2 lbs in February versus I will lose 25 pounds this year).
So, this is interesting, but how does it apply to medical billing? Well, if you keep these ideas in mind you can use them to achieve lofty improvements in medical billing performance. How? Start with a powerful and straight forward goal: Make sure your claims are clean before you submit them. This will help your medical billing in several ways:
- This goal forces you to concentrate on the most critical elements of medical billing - gathering the proper information and using it to create a clean claim;
- It allows you to focus on achievable, smaller goals (85% of claims go out clean in January, 87% go out clean in February, etc);
- Individual failures (rejected claims), provide fertile learning opportunities for improving your medical billing process. As long as you look at rejected claims with an eye towards how you can stop the rejections in the future and not just with a mind set of how do I fix this individual claim.
- There are many tools available to help you achieve this goal. They include claims scrubbers, coding tools, training seminars and insurance verification tools.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Understand where you are starting your journey (what portion of your claims are accepted on first submission);
- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Adopt the mentality that you will learn from your mistakes.
This approach and focus can allow your medical billing efforts to reach new standards of excellence in 2009.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16732
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Break your goal down into manageable pieces (i.e., I will lose 2 pounds in January; 2 lbs in February versus I will lose 25 pounds this year).
So, this is interesting, but how does it apply to medical billing? Well, if you keep these ideas in mind you can use them to achieve lofty improvements in medical billing performance. How? Start with a powerful and straight forward goal: Make sure your claims are clean before you submit them. This will help your medical billing in several ways:
- This goal forces you to concentrate on the most critical elements of medical billing - gathering the proper information and using it to create a clean claim;
- It allows you to focus on achievable, smaller goals (85% of claims go out clean in January, 87% go out clean in February, etc);
- Individual failures (rejected claims), provide fertile learning opportunities for improving your medical billing process. As long as you look at rejected claims with an eye towards how you can stop the rejections in the future and not just with a mind set of how do I fix this individual claim.
- There are many tools available to help you achieve this goal. They include claims scrubbers, coding tools, training seminars and insurance verification tools.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Understand where you are starting your journey (what portion of your claims are accepted on first submission);
- Write down a powerful and meaningful performance improvement goal (my practice will have over 95% of its claims accepted on the initial transmission);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Adopt the mentality that you will learn from your mistakes.
This approach and focus can allow your medical billing efforts to reach new standards of excellence in 2009.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16732
About the Author:
You can learn more about the best practices of medical billing companies by visiting the ClaimCare Medical Billing Services Blog. Learn how to achieve personal and business success by visiting MyMerlin.net a new online mentoring site for students and adults.
