We are posting this blog for ClaimCare clients and for other medical practices and facilities who have not yet become clients. During this continuing COVID-19 pandemic, we want to proactively explain to all in the healthcare industry why your Account Receivables may be behaving differently than anyone would expect.
In a previous blog I shared how ClaimCare spent significant time, energy and money putting in place a fully-tested, HIPAA-compliant work-from-home option several years ago following a flu season that hit ClaimCare and the nation hard.
Thus, we are one of the relatively few companies with no interruption or slowdown whatsoever in serving our clients in a timely and responsible manner. This cannot be said about many insurance payers.
Even though ClaimCare has been working our clients’ ARs consistently and hard throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are not getting the results these efforts would normally yield. This is because many payers entered the crisis unprepared and are now woefully understaffed.
Anything that requires “human intervention” in order to resolve appeals and other forms of claims reprocessing is taking much longer than normal. Some of our clients’ ARs have not decreased over the past three months as much as we normally are accustomed to seeing due to bottlenecks caused by payers. For example:
- With one very large payer that we can normally call and have a claim put back into reprocess on the same day, we now have difficulty in even conversing with a human.
- Medicare appeals normally take about 30 days to resolve, but now we have claims in appeals from March that still have not processed due to Medicare staff shortages.
- We left multiple messages for the Supervisor of one Medicare Advantage group, and when she finally returned our call she said, “We are doing the best we can, but we can’t give you an update yet on your appeals.”
ClaimCare continues to be very aggressive with these payers within the constraints of an unprecedented event limiting their staffing. We have found chains of command to be very thin and the Insurance Commissioner unable to get involved with pandemic-related slowdowns. We will eventually obtain what is due to our clients because we feel our 100% USA-based team is the best, most professional and most prepared to get the job done.
If anyone reading this blog post – client or non-client – has any specific questions or concerns regarding this current situation, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We in the healthcare industry are all in this together, working to achieve the best for patients, practices, facilities and America.
About ClaimCare ®
ClaimCare has 30 years of medical billing experience. We have an established 100% USA-based medical billing team that has been assembled through a thorough pre-employment screening. All personnel participate in on-going training and strong process management to ensure they deliver only the highest quality medical billing services to clients.
ClaimCare has once again been named a “Top 10 Medical Billing and Coding Company.” The honor this time comes from MD Tech Review. The magazine’s Augmenting Medical Billing and Coding Operations article presents solid reasons why ClaimCare has been chosen for this 2019-2020 recognition.
For more information, contact sales@claimcare.net, or phone toll-free at (855) 376-7631, or visit the ClaimCare Medical Billing Company website. We can assist your practice and/or facility in numerous ways, including complete certification processing.