How a Proactive Optometry Billing Process Brings You Success
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Is your practice proactive or reactive? When you pause to look at your optometry billing process, you will quickly answer that question.
Eye care professionals and their patients are facing decreasing insurance payments and increasing responsibilities. Office Manager Michelle Schoch of Vision Center LTD recognized these trends in the industry and witnessed the impact on both office locations she managed.
How did Michelle rise above these challenges to be more proactive—and less reactive? After seeing optometry billing progress at one office, Michelle brought the Fast Pay Health team into her second office location. Learn from Michelle’s firsthand experience, then take a proactive approach with your optometry billing process.
It has been a year since we last spoke with you about your Fast Pay Health experience. How is your optometry medical billing process going?
Things are going very well. We reach out to the Fast Pay Health team multiple times a week and trade information back-and-forth. The team provides great support.
Earlier this year you partnered with Fast Pay Health to take over optometry billing for your second office. How did you know it was time to bring in additional support?
We brought Fast Pay Health into our main location in Shelton almost three years ago. At our second location in Waterbury, we noticed how much we were missing out by not having Fast Pay Health supporting our optometry billing process. We figured it was time to bring the Waterbury office up to the same level.
Related: How Collaborative Optometry Billing Improves Your Bottom Line
Describe how you were handling billing tasks at both locations, before using Fast Pay Health, and how your daily routine is different now?
Where our routine is vastly different now is insurance eligibility verification and insurance remittance postings. Before Fast Pay Health, we did not have a true system to verify insurance. Insurance posting was a tedious and incredibly time-consuming task that was usually shuffled to the bottom of the priority list.
We did what we could when we found the time. Now the Fast Pay Health team efficiently takes care of insurance verification and insurance remittance postings, allowing us to focus on more important priorities.
Related: Reduce Denied Claims With Proactive Insurance Eligibility Verification
Can you share some of the proactive steps the Fast Pay Health team takes to reduce insurance aging?
We don't have an insurance aging problem anymore. Fast Pay Health regularly notifies us if the staff at either of our locations misses any claims for submissions. In the past, if we missed claim submissions, we typically did not catch them until the patient came in for their annual exam.
Now the Fast Pay Health team alerts us if we miss marking a claim for submission and they routinely check on any claims that haven't been paid. They also follow up with insurance companies and resolve any discrepancies.
How does benefit and eligibility verification help you provide better patient care and scheduling for third-party insurance administrators and out-of-network providers?
We receive a daily email from Fast Pay Health, which really helps our staff be more proactive with patient care. Fast Pay Health identifies incoming patients with inactive insurance or out-of-network plans, giving us the opportunity to alert patients ahead of time of any issues.
This benefit and eligibility verification process saves a lot of aggravation and time, as we do not need to manage insurance issues during patient check-in.
How does Fast Pay Health help manage VSP COB claims to maximize coverage and improve your financial outcome?
Fast Pay Health helps us manage the VSP coordination of benefits (COB) claims between medical and vision insurances with VSP. They alert us to any possible COB coverage or issues. Our staff gets the ball rolling and they take over from there.
What solutions is Fast Pay Health providing to help you be more successful with researching and resubmitting denied claims?
Fast Pay Health has eliminated the need for us to research and resubmit denied claims. They track claims and research unpaid claims—then contact insurance companies and resubmit denied claims as necessary.
How has Fast Pay Health helped improve the Medicaid claims submission and claim denial management?
Fast Pay Health helps us manage and post our Medicaid submissions and remittances through the Medicaid Web portal. Visibility into identifying claim errors and rejections is much easier with our daily email alerts. Claim denial management is faster and more effective with the Fast Pay Health team.
On average, how many claims does Fast Pay Health process each month for the Shelton office and the Waterbury office?
In the Shelton office, our staff processes 400-450 claims per month. In the Waterbury office, our staff processes 300-350 a month.
Now that your optometry billing process is more efficient, what are some priorities you are able to refocus on?
Insurance companies seem to be paying less and less and assigning more responsibility to our patients. Since insurance payments are decreasing, getting patient billing out promptly is more critical than ever.
In the past, efficient optometry billing was just not possible for us. We were a month behind in our postings and billings. With Fast Pay Health, posting our remittances efficiently helps us stay current on patient billing and focused on patient care.
Be proactive with your optometry billing process. Start with a complimentary practice analysis from Fast Pay Health.