Ep. 6: Ken Bulow – Getting Your Claim Paid After the Bill Goes Out | This Week in Surgery Centers

Here’s what to expect on this week’s episode. 🎙️

The patient had a successful surgery, and they just walked out of your #ASC to head home. But they still have a remaining balance they owe you – so now what?

Kenneth Bulow, EVP of Operations at Surgical Notes, shares his tips and best practices for getting your claims paid after the bill goes out. Every day you’re unable to collect money, your chance of collecting that balance decreases, so here’s what you can do.

🔄 Implement workflows and triggers. No manual process can effectively keep up with patient follow-up. Instead, you can use technology to automatically nudge patients via email or text on a cadence of your choice (ex., every three days) and push patients into a call list so that your staff knows who to follow up with and when.

🤝 Lean into your payer relationships. Culturally, we need to get out of the mindset that payers are the enemy. #Payers want to pay you. You just have to oblige to their unique rules and requirements. The more closely you can align yourself with your payers and share your goals with them, the better off you will be.

❌ Analyze denials and setbacks as often as possible. By frequently performing root-cause analyses, you can identify patterns in your process that might be going awry, create a plan to fix them, and then track the success of your plan.

🤔 Identify intellectually curious staff. Some people love to problem-solve. Find the right person within your team to help identify collection opportunities, learn your contracts inside and out, and recognize new solutions.

Find the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube to hear all the details!

In our news recap, we’ll cover CMS’ 2023 final payment rule, new innovation around tattoos and medical alert bracelets, the average consumers medical debts, and a nurse who helped care for a man after he collapsed during a Broadway show.