Revenue Cycle Management

Changing the odds of patient collections

It is anticipated that almost one-third – about 30 percent – of medical practice revenue this year will not come from insurance payments, but instead from the pockets of patients.

By Terry Douglas, Kareo H

ow do medical practices get paid? That’s an easy question – or it used to be. Many of us can remember the time when over 90 percent of medical practice revenue came directly from payments made by health insurance companies. Since this revenue stream was so predictable and such a majority of cash flow, it was not uncommon to view payments from

patients as just something extra and not as revenue to build budgets around. With so much of the cash

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flow dependent on insurance payments, medical practices became experts in getting that money. Highly trained medi- cal billers and knowledgeable care providers learned complex

20 October 2012

HEALTH MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

www.healthmgttech.com