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Faster easier benefit inquiries - How do you do them?

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partnersbilling:
I am trying to focus on time wasters in our company and one of the big time sucks that we have identified is keeping up with new patient benefit inquiries.

We verify benefits by phone and I have timed them and found that we do an average benefit inquiry in 17 minutes when averaged over the amount that we do in a week.

Got any tips to make them go faster? How do you do it?

kristin:
I almost never use the phone for benefits verification. Instead, I use Availity and Navinet websites, and also the websites of other insurance companies that I can't access on Availity and Navinet, such as UHC. Average time for me to use a website per patient is two minutes or less, from log-in, to printing out the benefits.

partnersbilling:
Really? Ok. Good tip. 2 minutes would be a 850% time improvement over 17 minutes. How did you get trained on navigating those websites? Because early when I was doing Benefit inquires, the information that we pulled off of the web was not accurate so we have stuck with phone calls.

kristin:
I trained myself on them, they are all pretty easy to use. The trend I see with insurance companies, in the last year or so, is that they want people to use Availity and Navinet, or their companies websites for verification of benefits, eligibility, and claim status. So therefore, the info offered on the sites is much better and accurate then it used to be. It is getting to the point with some companies where that is the only way to check claim status, for instance.

Another option is if the billing software you use offers benefit verification for an additional fee. I use that option with some of my remote work.

partnersbilling:
Fantastic. Therabill doesn't offer inquiry services. But in the ten minutes or so that we have been chatting, I logged into BCBS and spent 5 minutes figuring out where all the info was and then another 5 minutes knocking out three inquires. I'm so glad I found this place! You have changed the way I do business!

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