People in the behavioral health industry are usually passionate about helping others—but they’re not usually passionate about completing paperwork.

Very rarely do we hear our clients utter the words “I love medical billing!”

But the truth is, insurance billing is the lifeline of any behavioral health organization. Do it well, and your business has a chance to succeed. Do it poorly, and you definitely set yourself up for failure.

That’s why we take excellence in insurance billing very seriously at BehaveHealth.

We study systemic inefficiencies in the behavioral health billing ecosystem and develop innovative solutions for eliminating the most common mistakes, oversights and delays that derail the full, on-time reimbursement your organization deserves.

Today, let’s look at the 3 big secrets of efficient insurance billing we’ve developed especially for drug rehabs.

Efficient Insurance Billing Secret #1: Make it Impossible to Take “Bad” Notes

Efficient insurance billing starts with thorough, accurate notes.

Your clinical team’s notes are the “make or break” lynch pin to determining whether or not you’ll be reimbursed by insurance.

Sure, your clinicians know that they should follow ASAM’s standards and the SOAP note format, but there are still so many little ways to mess up notes.

Some common mistakes we see are:

• Missing number of group participants

• Missing credentialed signatures

• Mismatch between medical records and level of care

• Missing date

• Missing start/stop time

Frequently, the difference between a reimbursement and an insurance billing denial can be just a few keystrokes.

The solution? Make notes impossible to mess up.

BehaveHealth’s all-in-one cloud-based treatment center management solution features an integrated billing service. Not only does our software not allow “bad” notes to be entered in the first place, but our team of billing professionals works hard to catch and fix any errors before they become a problem.

Because our billing service is seamlessly integrated with the BehaveHealth EHR, we’re ready to start billing as soon as your clinical team enters notes in the system. This eliminates any wait time and gets your reimbursement to you faster than outdated, decentralized systems can.

Efficient Insurance Billing Secret #2: Have a Thorough Appeals Process in Place

Did you know that it’s estimated that 80% of medical bills contain errors? Across all disciplines, health care professionals are leaving up to $125 billion on the table due to inaccurate insurance billing.

That adds up.

But you know what else adds up? The time your team spends chasing those elusive dollars.

Following up with denials on your claims is a huge drain on your human resources.

Between double-checking that your own billing is error-free, making sure that the patient’s plan covers the services rendered, confirming that the patient hasn’t exceeded the limits within their specific plan, identifying errors in the payer’s processing and gathering up all the materials needed to support an appeal, it can sometimes feel like appealing an insurance denial isn’t worth it at all.

At BehaveHealth, we automatically handle all of the headaches associated with the appeals process, from start to finish.

But we don’t stop there—we keep you in the loop along the way with updates on every appeal.

You always know exactly where we are in the process and you get immediately notified of the resolution.

Efficient Insurance Billing Secret #3: Automate, Automate, Automate

Because insurance billing for behavioral health can be such a time-suck, you should always automate or outsource whatever part of the process you can.

Maintaining separate, non-integrated EHR and billing services means you’re opening your organization up to a lot of opportunity for error and even more opportunity for wasted time in the duplication of efforts.

Using the old-fashioned, non-integrated EHR and billing services system also means the information you need is never all at your fingertips. At best, you’re toggling between windows to gather up all the pertinent information and at worst, the information you need isn’t available on your computer at all.

At BehaveHealth, we eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies by letting our team of licensed clinicians and experienced specialists put everything you need in one place.

From your end, the billing process appears “automatic,” but in reality there is a team of dedicated professionals painstakingly checking and double-checking your billing to make sure everything runs smoothly and all the information you need is just a click away.

Want to Learn More Efficient Billing Secrets for Drug Rehabs?

Billing doesn’t excite everyone, but it is the backbone of a healthy behavioral health organization.

If you’re interested in learning more efficient billing secrets, check out our detailed breakdown of how our revenue cycle management system can work to streamline billing in your organization.