The Smart Rev Cycle Blog

Leading practices that are more productive than their peers continue to improve their performance in the Encounters per Hour (EPH) KPI. During 2019, the national average for coder productivity remained 23 EPH. Over the same period of time, top-performing practices improved productivity by 21.9%,...

One of our clients, The Orthopaedic Group, recently saw an 8x improvement in their coding productivity in less than 3 weeks. They achieved this incredible improvement by working as a team, overhauling their workflows, and implementing best practices. This huge increase in productivity is a direct...

Orthopaedic practices know how difficult billing for Durable Medical Equipment (DME) can be. In the midst of a busy workday, braces get sized and walk out the door quickly. By the time the physician documents their work, they may have forgotten what size it was, or even that they gave a brace at all....

Medical coding software is an important tool, but without the right processes in place, technology is useless. Technology can only be powerful when it is backed by users who follow industry best practices. One of the most important best practices in medical coding is coding by exception-only. Despite...

A bottleneck is a situation that causes a delay in a process or system. It is that place in your revenue cycle that slows everything down. It delays cash flow for your practice and harms your revenue cycle outcomes. Bottlenecks are sometimes difficult to recognize and remove. Common reasons for ignoring...

Ever since 2007, we have been striving as a healthcare community to achieve the Triple, now Quadruple, Aim of Healthcare. There have been many barriers to this goal, and at times it seemed radical and impossible. But it is possible. Using third-party applications in electronic health records, we can...

Patients and providers are both feeling the strain of high-deductible health insurance plans. Patients are responsible for more of their medical bills than ever before, and many people are struggling to make ends meet. For providers, it means that they are collecting from patients more than before,...

For a long time, the majority of practices have focused their attention on keeping out denials. It’s an obvious loss of revenue when claims get denied, especially since 50% of all denied claims never get resubmitted. While keeping a low denial rate is important, many practices are actually paying...

Every week there is a new article or statistic reflecting the pain that physicians experience from electronic health records. The majority of physicians are dissatisfied with their EHR. It takes more time to find the information they need for patient visits, the documentation burden has increased,...

When you’re already very productive and excellent at managing your revenue cycle, finding even more opportunities for time savings can be difficult. That’s the problem that a client of ours recently experienced. This very large orthopaedic practice was already 2x more productive than the national...