Accounting Tips Guides

Many people believe that just because a person owns a medical practice they have a lot of money. In some instances this can be true however, many times a physician can own a medical practice and still have very little money to show for it. This is not because he or she is not a good physician, most often it is because he or she lacks the skills to run the business end of their practice efficiently.

More and more physicians are finding that using a medical billing service actually helps them to run a more efficient office.

A medical billing company has trained professionals that will handle all of the billing needs from coding to submission to the insurance companies.

Many insurance companies today have reputations of being notorious for denying claims that have been submitted for the most ridiculous reasons.

A busy medical practice that submits their claims on their own is more likely to have those claims denied than if a medical billing service was used.

If a medical practice sees fifty patients a day, then fifty medical claim forms must be filled out and submitted. This means that the person who fills out the claims manually must go through the entire process fifty times a day manually and mail it to the insurance company where it will sit in stacks of thousands of other claims waiting to be entered into the insurance company computers. If there is one mistake, the claim will be rejected and sent back to the medical practice to be filled out properly.

This means that the person who fills out the medical claims will have more work than he or she can handle. It can be very frustrating.

Even if the claims are filled out correctly, it can take several weeks to several months to receive a check from the insurance company. For a small medical practice, it can be devastating if several claims are denied at the same time.

A medical billing service takes all of the headaches and frustration away because they handle every aspect of medical billing. Trained professionals code the claims and submit them to the insurance companies electronically, eliminating the process of manually entering them at the insurance company.

Another benefit is that a medical billing company offers is that they will follow the claim from beginning to end, making sure that there are no problems. They also have an excellent acceptance rate of over ninety percent.

When a claim is submitted electronically, it is either accepted or rejected immediately. When it is accepted, a reimbursement check is sent out within days and not weeks or months.

For small medical practices that rely on the insurance reimbursement checks to operate their business, a medical billing company is a godsend. Many think that the cost of a medical billing company is more than they can pay; however when you look at what you could lose, the cost is really quite reasonable.

Medical billing companies are available to everyone in the medical industry no matter what their specialty is.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing services

Throughout the country, busy medical practices are turning more and more toward medical billing companies because of the level of service they provide.

Any type of medical practice can use medical billing. It is a cost effective way to run the business end of your medical practice.

Small medical practices often take on the task of medical billing in order to cut corners and to save money. This can be devastating to the financial stability of the medical practice especially if it relies on the repayment from insurance companies to meet its financial obligations.

When medical personnel manually fill out the paperwork for billing, it can take long tedious hours just to make sure it is done correctly.

It is mailed to the insurance company where it is sorted in the mail room and then makes it way to the desk of the claims department where it sits in stack of medical claims waiting to be processed.

You are not guaranteed a speedy turnaround time and often it can take several months to see your return. If by chance there is a mistake on your claim, it is rejected and you have to start the process all over again.

It can be quite maddening to have to wait for a return that is not coming, and tracking a payment can be as frustrating as the rejection itself.

This is why medical billing is so critical to any medical practice. It takes all of the frustration out of the billing process because the highly trained professionals do all of the work for you.

As with any business, medical billing companies charge a fee for each claim that they process. Many people feel that the fee is not worth paying, however, when you stop and think about the service that you are paying for, you may find that it is worth the cost.

Medical billing companies provide a level of service that is second to none. The medical billing specialist code and send your medical claims electronically to insurance companies.

What this means is that the claim is sent directly to the insurance company computers where it is accepted or reject immediately and the billing service is notified within minutes. Once the claim is accepted, your payment is sent within days instead of weeks or months.

Medical billing companies also track each claim from the time it is submitted to the time you receive your check. This means that you have more time to spend with your patients without having to worry about anything else, and your office staff can devote more time to the duties of running your office.

This is what medical billing services offer their clients. An added benefit to using a medical billing company is that their acceptance rate of claims is over ninety percent meaning that the rejection rate is less than ten percent.

It just makes sense to use a medical billing company because of the advantages. The fast turnaround time is well worth the cost of the service.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. One of the types of
clients that Peter helps are medical billing service

Medical billing has become one of the most cost effective ways of operating a medical practice. No matter how big or small the practice is, medical billing can reduce the amount of time and energy that is spent filling out and submitting claims forms, allowing you staff to attend to the needs of your patients and office duties. Usually, a medical practice needs to hire one person for this position and most often it is very expensive.

Submitting claims forms to insurance companies can be a tedious and frustrating task. Endless hours are spent filling out forms and sending them to the insurance company everyday. The insurance company reviews medical form and if there is an error, which happens often, it is rejected and returned to the medical provider to be redone. When this happens, the workload for the medical biller is doubled. It can be overwhelming at times.

Another factor is that insurance companies receive millions of claim forms each week. They sit in stacks on employee desks until they can be processed. This can take weeks or even months for the claim to be reviewed, and if it is denied, the whole process starts all over again. It can be maddening, especially if the medical practice is depending on the refund from the insurance company.

A medical billing company can assist a physician practice on many levels. First, the personnel are highly trained and have a working relationship with most insurance companies. They are able to get claims processed faster than a single practice. The next factor of this type of company is that they file all of your claims electronically and submit it to the insurance company computers. This means that your claims do not sit on someone’s desk for an undetermined amount of time. The claim is either accepted or rejected immediately.

The acceptance level of a medical billing company is over ninety percent, which means that your claim will be paid n a matter of days and not weeks or months. If a claim is rejected, the medical billing company will correct the error and resubmit it. They also track each payment to find where it is in process and when the payment will be sent.

This is a great benefit to small practices that depend on the insurance payments to meet weekly or monthly obligations.

Medical billing services can be used by any type of medical practice. Big or small, no matter what the specialty is, the same quality service is offered.

Doing a simple Google search for medical billing will yield you with millions of links. It is important to research the ones that you are interested in as each has their own pricing and terms of service.

Many medical practices that have made the decision to use this type of service have been impressed with the results. They have found that they have more time for their patients and their staff can perform their duties more efficiently because of the time that is saved.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. One of the types of
clients that Peter helps are medical billing companies

If you want to make your business a success, a steady flow of revenue will be essential. Without a steady flow of money your business will stall and ultimately sink into debt and hard times as you live from payment to payment. But there are ways to ensure that you manage your receivables effectively. Read on to learn about some ways of accomplishing this.

All the bills and invoices that you have sent out constitute your receivables. This expected payment from customers and clients will be the bread and butter of your business as you will most likely rely on the proper payment of bills to finance any expansion plans or just to pay the plethora of bills that you will face. Hence, you cannot afford to play the fool with your account receivables.

You can’t just scribble down a bunch of numbers onto a little notepad and expect for everything to work itself out. You will need to keep a full sales ledger to track all of your customers’ outstanding debts. Make sure that you do not miss out on any bills. Improper management would mean senselessly lost revenue that could have helped your business grow even more.

Thus, you should make an effort to learn how best to manage the receivable of your business. This would be beneficial to you. There are many accounting terms and practices that you will have to learn if you wish to do it for yourself. This will involve a fair amount of accounting work. Get into it only if you have the time to spare. Many large businesses end up devoting tremendous labor into just managing their receivable and ensuring that debts are collected in the proper time frame.

If you want to manage your own account you will have to be ready to spend a considerable amount of time learning all of the ins and outs of the process. There are many legal processes and procedures that have to be followed which you may not be aware of. Improper management could result in a nasty disagreement, accounting errors, lost clients, and even possible lawsuits.

But don’t let all this talk of losses upset you too much. It is actually possible to outsource your accounts receivable to a special company that will ensure a steady flow of cash while also preventing you from having to personally deal with angry customers that just refuse to pay what they owe.

Most of these companies will actually act as a type of short term loan provider by buying your invoices at a discount and then earning money by collecting the full amount later. You might find this to be an odd procedure, but smaller businesses can actually benefit from this. They will have expertise that you can’t just learn and also have the drive and incentive to actually follow your debts through to the end.

Clearly, you cannot possibly afford to forget about or mismanage your receivables. Any business needs to have a steady flow of new money to continue to thrive and improve itself. If you want to make sure that the income keeps coming in, effective receivables management will be essential. Without it, you can bid goodbye to any payments.

Have accounts receivables? Use our collection services. We also help with receivables management.

Small businesses rely heavily on maintaining a good cash flow and having their clients pay on time. When a majority of small businesses are dealing with checks written against insufficient funds, that is indeed bad news for small businesses everywhere.

Recent studies have shown that small, medium and large companies have had many bounced checks. Micro companies, with less than 10 employees, have been less affected.

This frequently happens when someone pays a business by check for goods or services. The business deposits the check into its bank. The prudent business owner checks that the check has cleared and writes out new checks based on the money that is in the business bank account. It later turns out that the check may not have cleared at all and the business owner is now overdrawn and in debt. This means steep bank charges and makes it less likely that business facilities will be extended in the future.

Understanding The Check Clearing System

Most people know that a check takes anywhere from three to seven working days to clear. The date that a check clears depends on:

1. The currency in which the check is written. For example, US Dollar checks clear more quickly than checks written in French francs.

2. Whether the bank that has issued the check belongs to the same group of companies as the recipient bank. Checks usually take longer to clear when paid outside the banking group.

3. Whether the check is paid in on a business day.

What most people don’t know is that most banks ‘clear’ checks when the normal clearing period has elapsed. This sometimes happens before the bank has verified that the funds are available. The bank makes the amount of the check available for withdrawal but it hasn’t really cleared.

Some unscrupulous people can use this to their advantage. For example, they could pay by check for goods or services, write the wrong amount on the check, ask for a refund and disappear with the money well before the check clearing process is complete. When the original check bounces, it is the small business that is left facing an angry bank manager and a large bill.

Payment Help For Businesses

Fortunately, there are now some fairly basic and relatively inexpensive ways for businesses to receive money from their customers. Here are a few “Do’s” and “Don’ts” for you to follow. You can minimize or eliminate your bad check losses if you stop trouble before it starts.

1. Seek out and retain the advice of a competent Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firm. If you think you have a leaky pipe in your basement, you wouldn’t want to fix it yourself, would you? (Remember “The Bill Cosby Show” episodes?) A CPA is a professional that is trained to fix leaky financial systems. Retaining a CPA not only can guard your business from bad check writing, but also may catch and flag down a whole host of uncontrolled debits against your checking accounts.

2. Convert your accounts receivable systems to one or more trusted automated systems. These will ensure that secure funds are being deposited into your accounting system for the goods you have sold or the services you have rendered.

3. Your CPA accounting firm can provide you with many leads with which you can build secure money transfer capability into your financial system. Your bank can also provide very valuable assistance. It’s just a matter of doing some digging for advice and answers.

Business owners who are worried about being left with a large paper check debt should consider getting their customers to adopt one of these bill pay systems where possible. This will reduce the high business cost of bounced checks. As incentives, the business can advertise a number of “freebies” to its customers. In that manner, we all win.

Bob Carper is a veteran information systems consultant with an MBA from Pitt. For additional information go to All About Webconferencing or Effective Web Design. You may also e-mail Bob at robertcarper06@comcast.net

Oftentimes, business spend almost 100% of their time focusing on how to get new business in the door but have no specific process for collecting on past due accounts. Business owners might be surprised at how much revenue is waiting to be collected in the form of past due accounts. With these 5 steps, you’ll be on your way to recovering a great deal of found money:

Take Inventory
The first step is to find out just how much revenue you’re missing from past due accounts. Flag any accounts that are more than 30 days over due along with the date that the last payment was made. Enter the customer’s name in column A and the date of the last payment in column B. Label column C “days overdue and insert the Excel formula =TODAY()-B2, which will return the exact number of days it has been since each customer made a payment. This free and simple organizational tool will help you prioritize your collection efforts.

Call the Customer
You don’t have to be a collection agency to give your customers a ring. Try calling your customers to find out why they haven’t paid their bill. Many times when the customer realizes that their lack of payment is affecting a person, not just a faceless business, they are likely to make their payment. Unfortunately, making calls doesn’t always turn out positive and you’ll need to take further measures like hiring a collection agency.

Send Ten Day Demand Letters
In the collection business, it’s critical to move quickly. According to collection agency statistics, once an account becomes 3 months past due, you will most likely collect only 73 cents of every dollar. After one year, you’re likely to collect only 25 cents of every dollar owed. The most efficient way to start the collection process is to send a 10 day demand letter. Aguirre, Aikman, and Brown collection agency offers a free 10 day demand letter which is sent on official collection agency letterhead after you fill out a simple online form. Through AABUSA, printing and mailing are all free of charge. Oftentimes, a 10 day demand letter from a collection agency is enough to get a customer to pay.

Contact a Collection Agency
Just like you are a specialist in your field, a collection agency knows what works when it comes to collecting overdue payments. There are very specific rules and regulations around the permissible methods of contacting a debtor to collect on a past due balance. A collection agency stays up to date on consumer rights laws to keep them and you out of trouble while still achieving the desired results. No debtor likes the idea of owing money to a collection agency and debtors are more likely to pay once contacted by a collection agency.

Set up an Alert System
Since the longer payments are overdue the less you are likely to collect, it’s critical to set up some type of alert system to let you and your associates know when an account is overdue. Whether this is by constantly updating your Excel sheet or by using more sophisticated software, having some sort of alert system is a critical piece of running a profitable business. Once a payment becomes a certain number of days overdue, get in the habit of making a phone call or sending a demand letter and you’ll be surprised at how much less revenue you’ll lose as a result of deadbeat clients.

The author is a freelance copywriter. For more information about what a collection agency can do for you, visit www.AABUSA.com.