How to identify your AR

Like many illnesses, if the first sign of a symptom is not treated, your sore throat could lead to strep. The same goes for medical billing and collections. The first sign of a bloated A/R needs to be examined and treated. If not, strep throat looks like a good time in comparison to A/R pains.

Your A/R may seem in good standing, however, looks may be deceiving. We’ll go through the steps to determine if it really is a low A/R, or if the bulk of your A/R has been swept under the rug.

Barring diagnosis codes, modifiers and if a procedure was a medical necessity, we’re going to look for the not-so-common reasons your practice may be experiencing a diseased A/R.

Important: if your billing is done in-house, kindly ask your office staff for the reports and have a defibrillator within arm’s reach. If you read the report and made it, or woke up a couple of days later, welcome back. Now look for a third-party medical billing company immediately. (If a patient called your office complaining of chest pain, you’d tell the patient to hang up and call 911 immediately. This is the billing version of that. )

Now, finally, let’s run some diagnostics and catch some irregularities!

Ask your biller for these items:

1. Insurance A/R report.
2. Insurance write off report.
3. Credentials with all insurance carriers.


Now, compare your A/R to a healthy, good standing A/R.

  • 30 day AR…..80%
  • 60 day AR.….12%
  • 90 day AR.……5%
  • 120 day AR…..3%

If your A/R is similar to the example above, don’t X out of this blog just yet.

Take a look at the second report we requested, insurance write offs.

Look for write off amounts that are whole numbers. For example, if you see a write off for $350.00 that was in the 120 day column, and you know it’s not an inclusive procedure, your 120 day A/R is not really healthy. It just has really good complexion at this point.

Your credentials are imperative to your reimbursement rates. Check your credentials with ALL of your insurance carriers; make sure the provider profiles are mirrors of each other to ensure proper handling of all of your claims. This will ensure proper credential footing in the future, and avoid surprise payment holds due to conflicting credentials.

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