Your appointment schedule is full, your staff file and track claims timely and bill patients monthly, and day-to-day operations are running smoothly. Everything is going great … or is it?
If you’re not keeping month-to-month tabs on certain key financial indicators, you may have only a murky view of your practice operations. “We see a lot of practices that pay attention to only one thing — if enough money is coming in each month to pay the bills and pay the physicians,” said TMA practice consultant Brad Davis. “But a true financial picture is much more than that. Your practice management software has the data you need to create a monthly snapshot of several important key financial measures. This information is an invaluable guide for any practice.”
At a minimum, your staff should generate for your review the monthly reports listed below. What you want is a one-page summary or chart for each report that brings into sharp focus where that metric stands at that point. You can compare measures month to month to monitor trends in your operations.
Monthly Reports
- Financial summary: reports charges, payments, and adjustments for a specific period.
- Accounts receivable aging: reflects outstanding balances from insurance payers and patients, ideally broken down by payer; shows how long the accounts have been outstanding (current, 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, and so forth).
- Production analysis: tracks volume or number of encounters/visits by physician/midlevel professional; a breakdown by new and established patient visits also is recommended.
- Coding analysis: shows which physicians or midlevel professionals performed what services by Current Procedural Terminology code.
- Payer mix: reflects charges or collections per payer category.
- Missing charges report: lists visits/encounters on the schedule that do not have charges coded and/or billed.
- Credit balances: provides summary and detailed outstanding credit balances for which the practice owes refunds.
- Collections list: shows patients with past-due balances to be written off as bad debt or sent to collections.
TMA Practice Consulting helps practices large and small reach peak performance in their practice operations, from practice check-ups to a full operations assessment. Contact TMA Practice Consulting for more information at (800) 523-8776 or email practice.consulting@texmed.org.
For a better understanding of financial reports and why they are important to your practice, read TMA’s Business Basics for Physicians and Revenue Cycle Management: Keys to Success. They’re available for purchase in the TMA Education Center.
Published Feb. 7, 2017
TMA Practice E-Tips main page
Last Updated On
February 08, 2017
Originally Published On
February 07, 2017