With the rising demand for durable medical equipment, DME/HME suppliers have the best opportunity to grow and enhance their profits. The increased desire for home-based care exacerbated by an aging population is driving the market for medical equipment.
Despite the growing demand, most DME/HME businesses are opting out of the industry because of strict guidelines, billing issues, and low payments. Meanwhile, the few who have streamlined their billing processes enjoy efficient cash flows and huge payments. Let’s see how you can unlock profitability and boost success in your DME/HME supply enterprise.
- Improve the RCM Process
Smooth and efficient revenue cycle management (RCM) is the denominator for a successful home medical equipment business. The RCM journey starts with patient appointment scheduling and enrollment and ends with payment collection. In between, various tasks, which include document verification, claims management, equipment ordering and delivery, and management of co-pays, are the key anchors for effective RCM.
These tasks are many and burdensome and can take significant resources to accomplish, especially if you have a small team. Unless you can streamline the core activities that make the RCM, it’ll be difficult for you to make profits. DME/HME companies are already embracing the HME DME software nikohealth.com to speed up RCM. Such SaaS solutions allow you to concentrate on patient care while keeping the economics of your business in the right shape.
- Training Staff
The major challenge facing DME/HME companies is the hefty work involved in the verification of documents. Problems can double up if your staff doesn’t know how to code and bill equipment correctly. To minimize errors in medical billing and maximize profitability, train your staff. Staff training on DME/HME billing can accelerate growth as you reduce time and money spent on coding and billing.
However, some practices don’t have the resources to train staff. Such practices may choose to outsource DME/HME billing to third parties or adopt cloud-based software solutions. If you can’t bear the costs of hiring and training staff, consider practice management software, as it enables providers to minimize errors and build positive relationships easily. These DME software solutions are less costly than outsourcing and give you control over the financial aspects of your business.
- Streamline Document Verification
Without proper documentation, you risk getting higher denials and inconsistent cash flows. To fight fraud, waste, and abuse, CMS requires DME providers to provide documents that showcase equipment’s necessity, physician’s recommendation, and insurance details. For practices to secure reimbursement, they must undertake eligibility checks to find out if the patient’s health plan covers the equipment in question. When done manually, document verification and insurance eligibility are labor intensive.
However, DME/HME suppliers can automate and streamline document verification by using HME software. With this tool, your practice enjoys efficient and seamless patient eligibility checks. This not only lowers claims denials but increases customer satisfaction, creating more business and income for you.
- Enhance Patient Intake
The profitability of DME/HME companies depends on the efficiency of patient eligibility and verification. Durable medical equipment companies which still use manual processes such as making calls and moving from office to office to verify patients’ insurance information lose time and money. Manual processes are error-prone and burdensome, something that interferes with cash flow and the normal operations of your business.
What if you could automate the patient intake process? Some DME/HME suppliers have already moved away from the manual process by adopting practice management solutions that stir up the patient intake. With such a DME tool, it only requires a single staff member to feed patients’ data, and the software lays out everything in seconds. No waiting, no movements, and no phone calls.
- Boost Payment Posting
Fast and accurate payment posting is the dream of any healthcare business that wants to keep the cash coming and operations rolling. Remaining profitable in these tough times of CMS competitive bidding can be difficult if you don’t keep your financials in the right order. While some businesses see payment posting as an afterthought, improper posting can increase denials and disrupt revenue cycle management. Effective payment posting provides insights on RCM while enhancing A/R.
Late payments, denied claims, and improper billing, creates revenue leakages that eventually become huge losses. HME/DME suppliers can avoid this by automating the payment posting process to reduce errors, streamline RCM, and boost collections. Using Durable medical equipment billing software https://nikohealth.com/hme-dme-billing-software/ improves the overall payment posting process. This is because automated payment posting allows you to identify billing issues as they arise, expedite denial management, view in real-time the status of claims, and monitor patients’ payments.
Why We Prefer HME/DME Automation
When you’re running a DME/HME supply business, your core function is to deliver quality care and ensure patient satisfaction. However, the financial side of the business is a resource hog and can deny you the chance to provide the best care to patients. Yet you can’t avoid managing finances because that’s mostly the reason you’re in business.
Hiring more staff or outsourcing billing tasks seems like great options, but they are expensive. For that reason, we prefer automation via DME/HME cloud-based solutions. With these systems, you can collect more payments, maintain compliance, enhance patient intake, and streamline RCM, without needing to hire staff or outsource to third-party billers.
The profitability and success of your DME/HME business depend on timely reimbursements. While outsourcing and expanding your in-house teams can help, automation is the ultimate solution for a business that seeks to boost profits and patient care. Consider DME/HME automation tools if you want smooth RCM, seamless cash flow in your A/R, fast payments, and efficient patient intake.