It doesn’t matter if you are running a small medical practice or a well-settled hospital, you need to manage its revenues to keep a track of everything. Mental health billing is a time taking and tiring work. If you are new to this field, you feel overwhelmed and anxious by handling the mental health billing process. It seems weird that you can get anxiety and stress by handling the billing process of your mental health care center.

The best way to solve this issue is to get mental health billing services from a well-reputed and legit billing company. Apart from saving time and money, outsourcing the billing process will help you a lot in revenue cycle management as well. The revenue cycle for mental health billing includes several things. This cycle starts with the preregistration of the patient. You have to keep a track of every single penny that your practice earns via appointments, bookings, medical tests, and treatments.

As a newbie in this field, you may not have enough knowledge about what’s included in the revenue cycle for mental health billing. Don’t worry! We are here to tell you everything included in the revenue cycle for mental health billing. After knowing about them, you can make a final call about outsourcing the whole process or doing it by yourself.

Registration or Intake Information

The first thing included in the revenue cycle for mental health billing is intake information about patients. You can also call it the registration process. The basic information you have to take contains the following things.

• Patient’s legal name (the legal name means the name which is on the ID card and other docs of the patient)

• Date of birth or age of the patient

• Current and permanent address 

• Insurance member ID number

As you are treating the mental issues of patients, you have to see them again and again. Therefore, registration will be done only once. Patients don’t have to repeat the same information again and again upon every visit. Therefore, make sure to enter all the information correctly otherwise it will be printed wrong on the bills. 

Patients’ Copy

A copay is an amount that patients have to pay before getting any treatment. It is a fixed amount depending upon the type of treatment you are taking. Make sure to charge it before patients leave the facility. It becomes hard to charge it later. Furthermore, when more and more copays get collected due to frequent visits, the amount becomes large and patients must struggle to pay this large amount.

Create and Submit Claims

In the revenue cycle for mental health billing, you need to create and submit claims to the 3rd party insurance providers. These claims include all information about the treatments that you have provided to patients and the total expenses of these treatments. These claims are usually sent to the insurance providers after confirmation from them. 

However, the confirmation must be done at the time of registration. Both printed and soft form of claim was sent to the insurance providers. The most convenient method is to send a soft copy, as it is secure and remains saved in your device for later use. There are chances of misplacing the hard copy. 

Tracking the Claims

The next thing that is included in the revenue cycle is to track the claims. Your work will not end after sending the claims only. You can easily track or monitor the soft version of your claim on the user’s dashboard. Monitoring them is necessary to make sure they are progressing through the system and have reached the insurance providers.

Manage Denials

Not every time your claim will be approved by the insurance providers. You also have to manage the denials and appeal for their approval by sending new claims. You have to do so otherwise you may lose our payment. Denials are not new in mental health billing. To manage them you need to follow some steps including reviewing, resending, and appealing.

Get Paid

Once your claims get approved, the next step is to get paid. You need to send medical bills after generating them to the insurance provider and receive the payments in your account.

Bottom Line

After going through the things included in the revenue cycle for mental health billing you must have realized that it is very hard to manage all these things along with running your practice. Therefore, you must get medical billing outsourcing services for your mental health billing. The outsourced company handles all these things and you can focus on other matters of your practice.