4 tips for optimizing your home infusion cash posting process
Home infusion billing is complex, and cash posters have a pivotal role in helping pharmacies maximize their reimbursements. WellSky Revenue Cycle Services recognizes this important job, and that’s why we only employ experienced billing and collections staff to help home infusion businesses stay successful with timely, accurate payments. Hiring experienced staff in this role may cost more up front, but it’s an important investment that can alert your business about odd payer trends and save money in long run.
Use these four key tips to help your organization improve your cash posting process:
- Prioritize time management. Cash posters must process payments received in a timely manner. That way, billing teams know when payment will be received and collections teams aren’t left waiting. A best practice is processing incoming payments within two days or less, using the first-in, first-out (FIFO) method. For large payments received, if it cannot be auto-posted, this could take many hours to process a single payment, so it is important to manage each day with the most urgent payments that need to be applied.
- Don’t let urgency outweigh accuracy. With urgent and high-volume tasks, cash posters can quickly become overwhelmed. Cash posters often work quickly to get all payments posted on the same day they are received. However, working too quickly can increase the risk of errors and inaccuracies and create further complications. Quality check using your billing software’s tools to make sure your system’s cash posting balances with actual deposits. When a claim doesn’t have a zero-balance, but it was paid in full, this typically indicates an error has occurred. Most software systems will not let you post a batch until balance discrepancies are resolved. This hard stop is allows you to revise the entry to correct any errors. To identify there errors, cash posters need to review the remit and also review each individual invoice or check. Additionally, with auto-posting (and manual posting) you may find that the payer recouped some of the money when looking at the claim level detail. It’s very easy to accidentally post a recoup as a payment, which can create balance errors.
- Understand payer terms. Many insurance carriers have unique requirements for how claims should be billed and how they should be paid. That’s why cash posters need to understand all insurance carriers’ explanation of benefits (EOBs). It’s important to keep detailed notes on each major payer on hand in the event a unique scenario occurs. Cash posters should include notes/instructions on when to adjust or transfer a balance, the limitations on amounts that can be adjusted or transferred, and which codes to use to identify each transaction. In many instances, cash posters will set up specific adjustment codes for payments, denials, or adjustments that are unique to each payer.
- Recognize the broader scope of the cash posters’ role. Cash posters do much more than just posting payments, they are your first line of defense against payer errors and they can help your organization identify new trends. If a payment is received as less than was expected (or greater than expected), it is cash posters can call the payer to understand the reasons why over- or underpayment occurred. If you assign your cash poster to simply payment posting and nothing more, your collectors then spend time researching a scenario that could have easily been solved by the cash poster. Cash posters are also well equipped to identify new or unusual trends. Cash posters should be encouraged to report anything out of the ordinary to reimbursement managers and the billing team, so everyone is aware of a potential issue to resolve.
Home infusion billing can be challenging — especially when cash posters are managing high volumes of payments for a variety of patients and a variety of insurance providers. WellSky Revenue Cycle Services’ experienced billing and collections teams are here to help. We’re your resource for managing billing and ensuring timely, accurate reimbursements. Learn more about our billing and revenue services by clicking here.