1) Do not undervalue your biller.
One of the major mistakes agencies make is underrating the value of a good biller. Every agency owner and administrator must understand the gravity of billing and validate billers as a larger component to their success. Your biller is the last line of defense to ensure that you get paid. Poor Intake and poor documentation leads to bad billing. Good billers will catch the errors that cause claims to deny before they send the claim. If everyone does his or her part on the front side, the easy part is submitting the claim. Once the claim is submitted to the payor, your biller must follow-up timely on unpaid claims or your Accounts Receivables (A/R) will suffer and lead to cash flow problems.

2) To be a successful owner or administrator you MUST understand billing.
As an owner or administrator, if you do not understand billing, how can you assess your biller's work? How will you tell if your biller knows what he or she is talking about if you cannot challenge his or her billing knowledge? Have you ever created a claim using your software or worked in Medicare's Direct Data Entry (DDE)? Sit with your current billing staff; let them demonstrate their billing process for you. Learn their process, question their process and provide feedback. Understanding your agency's billing software, your biller's processes and Medicare's DDE will improve your agency's ability to maintain a good cash flow.

3) Hire people that either know billing or have the determination to learn billing.
Successful agencies hire either an experienced biller or one who is eager to learn. You put your agency at risk when you hire billers who have no concept of billing and have no desire to learn. Novice billers with a drive to succeed can become great billers if you invest in them. Hire billers who are motivated, meticulous, teachable, and will take the initiative to seek answers for what they do not understand.

4) Continuing education is vital to your biller's success.
Every agency should give their billers the resources for continuing education to improve their billing knowledge. Just as you value continuing education for nurses or coders, make sure that you encourage your billers to improve their skills and to stay current with CMS guidelines by attending billing trainings.

Billing training resources:

• Medicare Learning Network
• Cahaba University
• Palmetto Workshops
• National Government Services (NGS)
• Precision Medical Billing (PMB) Seminar Series

5) Avoid the disconnection between a third party biller and your software solution.
If you hire a third party biller, make sure to close the gap between the work the biller is doing and your home health billing software. To avoid the disconnection between your third party biller and your billing software, you must:

• Be able to reconcile what your software shows for episodes completed and what your third party biller shows for claims billed
• Be able to reconcile between what has been billed and what has been paid
• Be able to reconcile what was paid against what you receive in bank deposits
• Receive copies of all remittance advice (EOB: explanation of benefits) to assist in reconciliation
• Know and understand your Accounts Receivable
• Receive good weekly reports from your third party biller

The real-time information available in Web-based solutions such as Kinnser's Agency Manager™ will enable you to close the gap between software and your third party biller by helping you and your biller to be more in synch with claims in A/R. Register for a customized demo here to learn more.