Enhancing Your Radiology Practice With Effective Revenue Cycle Management

The health of your radiology practice hinges on revenue cycle management (RCM). This process, which encompasses tracking, billing, and collecting payments, is the backbone of your success as a business and future sustainability. Without it, cash flow suffers, patient satisfaction decreases, and your practice ultimately faces closure.

Radiology practices experience specific challenges with RCM, such as dual billing components and frequent updates to coding standards. Learn how to improve radiology revenue cycle management with the right procedures and software.

Understanding Radiology Revenue Cycle Management

Revenue cycle management (RCM) is vital to a well-functioning healthcare system. It encompasses all the clinical and administrative functions involved in capturing, managing, and collecting patient revenue.

The revenue cycle consists of many components for radiology practices. A few significant ones include:

• Patient registration
• Insurance verification
• Medical coding
• Claims submission
• Payment posting
• Patient follow-ups

The main goals of RCM are minimizing claim denials, reducing errors, and boosting cash flow — all of which contribute to the practice’s revenue.

Challenges in Radiology Revenue Cycle Management

On average, radiologists collect just 79% of the revenue they’ve earned. This indicates a significant need for improvement with RCM.

Radiology services face several challenges within the billing process. The rate of denied claims in this industry is nearly 30%. Denials are common due to medical coding errors, such as selecting the wrong Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for the imaging services provided.

Healthcare providers may also fail to clearly document the medical necessity of the radiology exam, leading to denials. This mistake falls on the radiology providers rather than the prescribing physicians.

Key Components of Effective Radiology RCM

Radiology practices looking to improve RCM should understand several components of an effective and optimized revenue cycle:

Accurate Coding and Documentation

Reducing billing errors and improving medical coding practices play critical roles in RCM. These strategies help avoid claim denials and ensure regulatory compliance. Your radiology coding team must stay up to date with ICD-10, CPT, and HCPCS codes to ensure accurate documentation and billing.

Efficient Claims Management

Submitting insurance claims promptly can give your radiology practice more leeway for delays and denials. It’s in your best interest to leverage technology to streamline this process, such as insurance clearinghouses that integrate with your practice management software.

These platforms meet regulatory standards for confidentiality and take much of the manual work out of insurance verification and claim submission.

Denial Management and Appeals

The higher your claim denial rates, the lower your overall revenue. Mitigate the impact of this issue by creating protocols for appealing denied radiology claims. This involves analyzing the root cause for most denials, setting up systems to avoid those causes, and appealing denials promptly.

Patient Engagement and Communication

Improving radiology revenue cycle management isn’t just about perfecting billing practices; it also involves enhancing patient care and keeping your schedule full. Every patient encounter can have a minute effect on your revenue.

Satisfied patients often promote smoother billing processes as well. Set up appointment reminders and communicate billing procedures clearly to improve the patient experience.

Best Practices for Optimizing Radiology RCM

Prioritizing the above elements can improve your RCM processes, but keeping a few best practices in mind can further boost your bottom line.

• Regular financial health assessments: Get into the habit of evaluating your financial health periodically. Take the time to pinpoint inefficiencies in medical billing and revenue leaks before they turn into major cost sinks. Financial experts or dedicated RCM services can perform comprehensive assessments of your revenue cycle and suggest actionable insights.
• Leveraging technology and automation: The right RCM software and technology can help you improve accuracy in medical coding and billing. It can also prompt faster payments, make it easier to maintain proper documentation, and improve your financial outcomes overall. Artificial intelligence tools may further enhance productivity and interactions with patients. You just need to choose the right programs to eliminate compliance risks.
• Staff training and education: To optimize RCM, you need a dedicated team working toward the common goal of managing and increasing revenue. Providing continuous education for your coding and billing staff can reduce errors and ensure the accuracy of insurance claims. If you begin seeing recurring issues, address them promptly through additional training.

Learn more about revenue cycle management best practices here.

The Role of Weave in Enhancing Radiology RCM

If you want to enhance radiology revenue cycle management, leveraging the right software can make a huge difference. Weave is your go-to solution for radiology billing, patient communication, and much more. Make Weave a regular component of your practice’s workflow and enjoy a range of benefits.

Comprehensive Communication Platform

Weave is a modern communication platform that integrates phone services, text messaging, email, and more into one comprehensive solution. This software helps you enhance client communication without taking up more of your practice’s time.

You can even automatically send personalized text messages to patients, showing that you care about their experiences. The time you save can be spent on radiology billing and other critical tasks.

Patient Engagement Tools

Countless features within the Weave software help engage your patient base and promote better satisfaction and retention. A few notable ones include:

• Appointment reminders: Send automatic reminders via text and email prior to a patient’s appointment.
• Online scheduling: Allow patients to schedule services online rather than calling your facility, making certain patients more likely to choose your healthcare practice.
• Digital forms: Enable patients to fill out forms online before their appointments, saving your practice time.

All of these features can reduce administrative burdens on your team and streamline patient interactions.

Billing and Payment Solutions

Along with its communication and patient engagement features, Weave includes robust billing and payment solutions to enhance your RCM. Patients can submit billing and payments through a range of methods, including:

• Terminals
• Manual card entry
• Card on file
• Buy Now Pay Over Time
• Text to Pay

These options make patients more likely to pay their bills promptly. With Weave, you can also automate insurance verification and streamline billing services.

AI-Powered Features

Weave’s AI-powered tools take your practice’s productivity and engagement up a notch without sacrificing the quality of interactions. For instance, the AI Response Assistant helps you manage online reviews to maintain a positive reputation, while Call Intelligence analyzes patient interactions to identify areas needing improvement.

Improve Revenue Cycle Management and Medical Billing With Weave

Prioritizing radiology revenue cycle management improves your practice’s sustainability and sets you up to provide the best patient care. By ensuring billing accuracy, appealing denied claims, and leveraging the right technology, you can optimize your RCM processes.

Weave’s solutions can also enhance your practice’s efficiency and financial performance. Get a demo of Weave today to experience these benefits (and countless others) firsthand.

Want to see
more about
Weave?
1 System for Phones, Texting, Payments, & More
 Access a full suite of patient communication tools with Weave! Texting, payments, reviews, & scheduling in one place. Get started today!
Get Started