Overcoming patient demographic data verification challenges with Insurance Discovery and Demographic Verification

According to a survey by HIMSS, healthcare organizations spend nearly 110 hours per week on patient identity challenges – with an average of 10 full-time employees dedicated to patient identity. How can you break down barriers to care while unburdening billing staff? The answer could lie in improving your patient demographic data verification processes.

There’s a better way to facilitate access to care, enhance the patient experience, and improve employee satisfaction. Let’s explore how to increase the accuracy of insurance discovery and get better patient coverage results to maximize reimbursements.

Save time with automated insurance identification technology

According to CAQH Index, manual costs for eligibility and benefit verification are around $7.32, but costs with a hybrid manual and electronic approach are reduced to $2.73. Relying on manual data verification processes leads to an increased burden on billing staff and a drain on your organization’s resources. The right technology can help you save time, enhance your revenue cycle, and do more for your patients.

Inovalon Insurance Discovery can find up to twice the number of payers compared to other services.¹ Identifying applicable secondary and tertiary payers can help you secure more reimbursements and ensure that patients receive uninterrupted care. But that’s only the beginning. With Insurance Discovery and Demographic Verification, providers can:

• Decrease patients’ financial burden by improving insurance coverage matches
• Reduce denials by correcting inaccurate or incomplete patient information
• Help protect patients by identifying early warnings of potential identity theft
• Maximize reimbursements by decreasing undeliverable bills to patients

Improve patient satisfaction by removing financial barriers to care

Patients bear a higher financial responsibility for their healthcare costs than ever before. Claims denials can cause significant delays to care and increase that burden. With technology that finds and applies accurate patient data to identify all appropriate payers, healthcare providers can reduce patient bad debt while removing barriers to care – without spending valuable billing staff time chasing down patients’ information.

Overcome Medicare patient demographic data verification challenges

Demographic Verification technology can correct inaccurate or incomplete patient data fields by verifying patient demographic data, including name, address, date of birth, phone number, and Social Security number against Inovalon source databases. This is especially valuable when searching for and identifying Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) numbers to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries get the care they need.

Improve security and privacy measures with early warnings of potential identity fraud

Medical identity theft is a very real threat for your patients. According to NPR, in 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received nearly 28,000 reports of medical identity theft. Protect your patients and your organization with software that can identify red flags and provide early warnings of potential identity fraud.

Achieve more complete reimbursements in less time

On average, 17% of in-network claims are denied, and as many as 60% of denied claims are never resubmitted for payment. Claims edits and resubmissions drain billing staff time and draw out days in A/R, but failing to rework denied claims leaves revenue on the table. What can you do? Imagine bypassing all of that work by submitting claims with accurate, complete patient information the first time and every time. Further, with patient demographic data verification software, you may be able to significantly reduce write-offs by decreasing instances of denials and undeliverable bills.

Demographic Verification technology identifies, flags, and corrects patient demographic information to reduce denied claims, reduce days in A/R, remove barriers to care, and reduce patient identity fraud. This technology can help you reduce denials by ensuring that all of your patients’ data is accurate at registration.

To find out more about how Demographic Verification integrates to Insurance Discovery, schedule a demo today.

Sources:

1. Average of customer results. Inovalon internal reporting, 2022.

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