Emdeon Releases Whitepaper on Payment Collection Best Practices for Small Physician Practices

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Emdeon, a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, today released a whitepaper titled, "Time-Tested and Practice-Proven: Top Tips for Collecting Payments," detailing the optimization of collecting payments for small physician practices.

Healthcare providers today face a host of unique challenges, including higher patient deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, declining reimbursements, rising costs and pressure to increase collection of payments. The Emdeon whitepaper examines these issues and offers actionable solutions physicians can adapt to help improve payment collections in their own small practices.

"In today's healthcare delivery environment, providers have been left with two basic options when facing future revenue challenges: decrease expenses or increase revenue," said Gene Boerger, vice president of provider product development for Emdeon. "Unfortunately, decreasing expenses isn't enough. Physician practices also need proven tactics to collect a higher percentage of revenue for services performed, as well as tools to benchmark productivity and payment collection metrics to enable future improvements."

Highlights from the Emdeon whitepaper include strategies physician practices can adopt to improve the revenue cycle, such as:

• verification of eligibility and benefits prior to an appointment;
• using a claim estimator to determine probable patient-responsible charges;
• collecting patient-responsible payments at the time of service;
• optimizing payment collections with technology solutions, such as online payment; and
• benchmarking certain productivity, payment collection and billing metrics to measure success.

"When it comes to collecting timely payments from patients, small physician practices generally struggle more than larger healthcare providers," said Boerger. "Emdeon is pleased to offer this whitepaper detailing valuable tools for small physician practices working to stay in the black. We believe implementation of these "best practice" tips for pre- and post-visit administrative processes will help providers operate a more efficient, profitable practice."

To learn more about how small physician practices can increase revenue by optimizing payment collections, download the complimentary whitepaper at http://www.emdeon.com/resourcepdfs/EMDA1040200.pdf.

About Emdeon
Emdeon is a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, connecting payers, providers and patients in the U.S. healthcare system. Emdeon's product and service offerings integrate and automate key business and administrative functions of its payer and provider customers throughout the patient encounter. Through the use of Emdeon's comprehensive suite of products and services, which are designed to easily integrate with existing technology infrastructures, customers are able to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase cash flow and more efficiently manage the complex revenue and payment cycle and clinical information exchange processes. For more information, visit www.emdeon.com.

SOURCE Emdeon