Your EMS agency is in the business of serving patients. But without a smooth, accurate, and timely billing process, you won’t have the cash flow to sustain an effective operation. That makes your billing process just as mission critical as any other process in your organization.
Your EMS billing process sets the foundation to optimize and speed reimbursement and improve cash flow. Yet, many EMS operations still rely on manual, paper-based procedures or outdated software to handle the billing function.
When an EMS agency doesn’t fully leverage the power of automation to speed and streamline billing, the consequences directly impact the bottom line. Data entry mistakes, incorrect codes, and missing documentation become common, leading to delayed reimbursements, claim denials, or incorrect payment amounts. Pending payments and claim denials are easily overlooked, hindering cash flow. And a great deal of your scarce labor is spent on an inefficient billing process, instead of on tasks that truly need their attention and expertise.
An automated billing process eliminates these challenges by equipping your billers to produce complete, accurate, timely claim submissions as efficiently as possible. Here are four ways that automation will streamline your EMS billing and optimize your reimbursement.
1. Automated Data Validation and Error Checking
An accurate claim submission demands accurate data. But the more manual steps involved in your billing process, the greater the odds of human error, and the greater the risk the claim will be rejected.
A streamlined EMS billing process not only reduces manual work and eliminates duplicate and error-prone data entry; it automates the process of checking for errors and validating the data before your billers submit the claim. By using the automated data validation and error checking features found in industry-leading solutions like AIM’s EMS Billing Software, your billers will generate accurate bills faster, with less work.
2. Automated Insurance Verification
Without an automated billing process in place, your staff will waste precious time manually searching for and entering each patient’s insurance information—with the potential for data entry errors along the way. At the very least, your billers will waste time responding to payer questions and requests for information; in the worst case, the claim will be rejected.
A streamlined EMS billing process should include an automated mechanism for checking the patient’s eligibility and validating their insurance, then auto-populating the correct insurance information into your billing system. For example, AIM’s EMS Billing Software includes a one-click insurance eligibility checking feature, with the correct insurance data automatically entered into the billing system. Features like these eliminate manual data entry errors and save billers valuable time, while reducing claim denials and optimizing reimbursement.
3. Customized EMS Billing Workflows
When a logical workflow guides every step of your EMS billing process, your billers will spend less time and effort getting a complete and accurate bill out the door. An automated billing process will naturally guide billers through every step in their workflow, ensuring every activity occurs when it should and nothing falls through the cracks.
A robust EMS billing solution, like AIM’s EMS Billing Software, will enable you to configure your billing workflows to suit how your agency operates. For instance, you should be able to create a customized workflow calendar that identifies which billing activities need to occur daily, weekly, or monthly, and set up customized work queues that make it easy and efficient for your billers to work their assigned claims. The EMS billing software also should allow you to configure your workflow to support how your team handles claims—whether you assign various steps in the process to different team members or a single biller handles the process from start to finish. An automated billing workflow also should allow you to determine which fields in your billing software are required vs optional and choose which fields to auto-populate from your dispatch or ePCR software to save billers times, improve their productivity, and enhance data accuracy.
(For valuable tips on how to improve your EMS billing workflow, view our webinar on Mastering EMS Billing.)
4. Integration with Dispatch and ePCR
Using an automated process for EMS billing sets the stage to create a true end-to-end process that ensures every staff member has the information they need to do their jobs effectively. When you integrate your EMS billing software with your dispatch and ePCR software, you gain the benefit of a fully automated process that passes the required information from one step to the next: eliminating duplicate data entry, improving data quality, and ensuring your team has all the documentation needed to support a complete claim submission.
For example, much of the information collected by the dispatcher and the responding crew is eventually needed when the call is complete and ready to be billed. When your billers can leverage all the information gathered throughout the process, they can create an accurate and complete bill, faster and with less work. And your EMS agency can cash in the door faster.
When EMS agencies look to create a billing process that improves efficiency and optimizes reimbursement, they turn to the experts at AIM. Hundreds of EMS agencies use our secure, cloud-based EMS Billing Software to automate and streamline their billers’ work, enhance revenue cycle management, and improve cash flow.
Because it’s purpose-built for EMS operations—by a team with decades of EMS industry experience—AIM’s EMS Billing Software provides everything your billers need to generate accurate, complete claim submissions faster. In fact, agencies that use our EMS Billing Software reduce their claim submission time by up to 50%. They’re also able to handle more claim volume without adding staff, which is critical at a time when qualified labor is scarce and rising costs are weighing on profitability.
Discover how AIM EMS Billing Software can streamline your billing and improve your reimbursement.
Schedule a software demo or request a free evaluation of your billing process.
