athenaPractice Revenue Cycle Year-End Checklist

athenaPractice

Fee and Allowable Fee Schedules

☐ Review and update fee schedules & allowables for in athenaPractice™

 

Allowable Schedule Tips: Contact payers (at least your top 5 payers) and request the allowable schedule for upcoming year

 

☐ Review documentation for E&M Coding changes and make plans accordingly

 

Schedule Review & Management

☐ Review and update schedule templates to reflect working hours of your providers in the new year

☐ Consider alterations to schedules to proactively adapt to changing healthcare landscape (i.e., telehealth visits, sick/well visits, in office testing, hospital procedures)

 

Fully Work Receivables, Collections, and Overpaid Claims

☐ Identify and resolve any outstanding Accounts Receivable issues to start the new year with up-to-date Accounts Receivable

☐ Review overpaid claims and issue credits as appropriate

☐ Utilize Task Management to identify receivables needing work & potential overpaid claims

☐ Review and verify collection agency information

☐ Identify an office policy/procedure for working delinquent patient accounts, especially if you are not working with a collection agency

☐ Review bad debt, collections policies, and update if needed

 

Self-Pay

☐ Consider adjusting self-pay balances of a certain age to bad debt or send the balances to your Collection Agency (per your office policy)

☐ Consider new office policies for no shows, cancelations etc., and communication via statements or other methods

 

Deductibles

☐ Remind staff of high January deductibles

☐ Be sure you are collecting as much money as possible at Time of Service

 

Patient (Paper) Forms/Questionnaires

☐ Review to ensure the hard-copy forms include the correct year

 

Plan your Hard Close Date

☐ Ensure you have a plan to hard close your month/year

 

Note: Closing the Day (Hard Close) is the process that locks financial transactions so that they cannot be changed without creating an audit trail. Through security, you can determine which users will have the ability to modify (void and clone) or delete (void) transactions from previous months. This ensures the financial integrity of your system and the accuracy of your reports. Leaving the system open allows transactions to be modified or deleted without an audit trail.