We are fast approaching the end of January and the point in the New Year when the majority of people's New Year's resolutions have already failed. This is, however, the time for renewed efforts to focus one's resources on achieving the desired goal. There are two keys to reaching your goals:
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Create a series of intermediate goals between where you are and where you want to be (i.e., instead of "I will lose 50 pounds this year" focus on "I will lose 1 pound each week").
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- It focuses you on the most critical aspect of billing. If the claims go out the door clean you will find that all of the rest of the challenges start to become much more manageable;
- It allows you to focus on achievable, smaller goals (85% of claims go out clean in January, 87% go out clean in February, etc);
- This goal has many ways in which failure provides powerful learning opportunities. You can set aside time to analyze rejected claims to determine the source of the rejection and then focus on eliminating the problem area.
- There are many tools available to help you achieve this goal. They include claims scrubbers, coding tools, training seminars and insurance verification tools.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Determine where you stand today (what percentage of your claims get paid on the first submission);
- Decide upon a stretch target (I will increase my clean claim percentage by 15 points this year);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Adopt the mentality that you will learn from your mistakes.
With this approach you can make 2009 your best medical billing year ever.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16069
1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and
2. Create a series of intermediate goals between where you are and where you want to be (i.e., instead of "I will lose 50 pounds this year" focus on "I will lose 1 pound each week").
These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year's resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:
- It focuses you on the most critical aspect of billing. If the claims go out the door clean you will find that all of the rest of the challenges start to become much more manageable;
- It allows you to focus on achievable, smaller goals (85% of claims go out clean in January, 87% go out clean in February, etc);
- This goal has many ways in which failure provides powerful learning opportunities. You can set aside time to analyze rejected claims to determine the source of the rejection and then focus on eliminating the problem area.
- There are many tools available to help you achieve this goal. They include claims scrubbers, coding tools, training seminars and insurance verification tools.
What does all of this mean? It means this is the time for a renewed focus on your medical billing business goals. It is time to:
- Determine where you stand today (what percentage of your claims get paid on the first submission);
- Decide upon a stretch target (I will increase my clean claim percentage by 15 points this year);
- Create a "goal ladder" where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and
- Adopt the mentality that you will learn from your mistakes.
With this approach you can make 2009 your best medical billing year ever.
Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II - 16069
About the Author:
You can read more about world-class medical billing companies by going to ClaimCare's medical billing blog. read how to achieve personal and business success by visiting MyMerlin.net a new online mentoring site for students and adults.