Managing a practice is no easy feat, especially in these unprecedented times. The claims management process can be particularly challenging when treating workers’ compensation patients.
We realize that your days are filled with laborious tasks from managing staff, optimizing patient schedules and staying on top of revenue cycle management to ensure your patient satisfaction. Treating injured workers adds another layer of complexities, from gathering incident details to communicating with adjusters and completing the appropriate forms - each step along the way requires a great deal of manpower and effort. The intricate and highly manual claims authorization process is not only frustrating for clinicians and staff, but your patients progress may be hindered as a result of frequent delays in care. Now, more than ever, your practice may be challenged to accomplish more with less while struggling to maintain patient volumes.In a recently conducted internal survey, One Call asked practice managers to identify the areas that represent the greatest pain points specific to treating workers’ compensation patients. Their feedback revealed three main areas of concern:
- Obtaining authorizations
- Scheduling patients
- Receiving timely status updates
These issues resulted from lack of resources, time, and misaligned internal processes. Automation continues to take the place of manual processes in the medical field. However, workers’ compensation claims processing remains antiquated, manual and inefficient. The ultimate goal for a workers’ compensation patient is to return to work, and life, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Therefore, it is important to optimize internal processes relative to assessing, planning and managing patient care.
What value would you place on automating your workers’ compensation claims? Imagine if you no longer needed to muddle through redundant processes to verify a patient’s eligibility and schedule their DX, PT, OT or other ancillary appointments. As you move through your research phase, consider looking for a holistic ancillary care management partner. After all, isn’t in nice to have one point of contact for services? There are also programs that are free, with no contracts or long-term commitments – because what’s better than that? You’re busy managing your practice. You don’t have time to meet with adjusters, oversee scheduling/authorizations and take on extra paperwork. This is the time to assess your internal processes and identify where you may be able to leverage outside expertise.
We know 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone. Don’t get bogged down in your workers’ comp claims management… Learn more about how you can alleviate the burden of workers’ compensation claims management and email us at SPS_Consult@onecallcm.com.
