By Devin Partida, Editor-in-Chief, ReHack.com
LinkedIn: Devin Partida
LinkedIn: ReHack Magazine
Healthcare IT and accounting work hand in hand to provide patients with safe and affordable virtual services. Maintaining secure environments protects customer data and increases trust, encouraging people to return for more services when needed. Healthcare IT experts must balance insurance claims, regulatory compliance and billing protocols within specialized bookkeeping software to manage everything effectively.
How to Track Finances and Comply with Regulations
Offices earn money from telehealth visits, allocate budgets to support remote patient devices and spend money to receive compliance audits. The U.S. telemedicine industry will quadruple in size by 2034, demanding new financial tactics. Cash flows are constantly moving, and healthcare IT professionals must collaborate with experts to track revenue within well-defended software.
Organizations must track every niche service by leveraging technology. Medical professionals need to leave manual recordkeeping in the past, as services become increasingly complex with virtual care. Additionally, populations are growing, which increases the number of patients and data to track. Using software lowers human error and boosts productivity via automation.
Staff must monitor accounts receivable daily. It gives them visibility over processed claims and allows them to investigate accuracy concerns. The same goes for payroll management, which can do everything from issuing pay stubs to sending tax information. These assets must have healthcare compliance information within their ecosystem to ensure all financial tasks are ethical and support patient-first mindsets.
The data informs pricing and virtual services, improving customer experience. Hospitals must ensure they are not undercharging for services and losing revenue. Simultaneously, they need to see if they overcharge to avoid damaging patient relationships. Robust data also makes audits more straightforward, maintaining reputation and transparency with up-to-date bookkeeping.
Essential Features in Healthcare Bookkeeping Software
In addition to payroll management and compliance guidance, these are the other critical features healthcare bookkeeping programs should contain:
- Revenue cycle management
- Automated invoicing
- Expense categorization and tracking
- Patient billing profiles
- Analytics
- Tax information
- Cloud backups
- Electronic health records access
- Collaborative functionality
Security is another nonnegotiable. Third-party vendors must adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Internal Revenue Service, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the International Financial Reporting Standards, among any additional localized requirements. Compliance helps medical facilities avoid penalties and safeguard data from cyberattacks.
How to Implement Digital Bookkeeping in Healthcare
Healthcare IT professionals can take these steps to incorporate software in a seamless and compliant fashion.
1. Research the Vendor
The digital healthcare landscape is still growing. Teams must locate a reputable provider for their bookkeeping solution. The third party must have specific experience with the medical sector to provide next-generation, flexible capabilities as virtual care expands and changes.
For example, a psychologist may add virtual reality therapy as a new treatment option, since it is proven to help with mental health and chronic pain. Software should allow the addition of new and emerging services.
2. Handle the Complexities
Businesses must choose programs that can handle the most complicated financial minutiae in the medical world. This includes determining the value of a virtual consultation, coding it for insurance companies, and distributing funds for reimbursement and coverage. Customizing programs for the facility’s needs is critical.
3. Reconcile and Balance
Visiting a doctor’s office prompts patients to pay at the desk. Virtual care avoids this, requiring greater oversight. Accountants must automate payment reminders and determine late fees, if applicable. Staff can also take credit cards so that the responsibility of collections is transferred to a third party, alleviating the healthcare facility of the financial burden of unpaid bills.
Teams should also keep tabs on insurance reimbursements. The number of in-progress claims from numerous sources — including government-supported and private insurance — can make this cumbersome, so organizations can use the program to sort and visualize tasks based on urgency.
4. Track Expenses
Viewing cash flow dashboards and acclimating to the tools is crucial for discovering how much flexibility teams have with spending. Healthcare-specific tools can show teams the exact numbers. If using accrual accounting methods, they can see outstanding balances, quarterly revenue and overhead to determine investments in digital transformation or employee raises.
5. Submit Reporting
Entities like HIPAA determine what patient information is shared and stored. Every visit from an auditor is a chance to improve. They can view the data and suggest better management of protected health information based on the report’s characteristics, such as the data’s age and density.
Better Patient Care With Virtual Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping services must adapt as more patients seek treatment in hybrid environments. Tight security is required to keep everyone’s information safe and healthy. IT must work with accounting departments to build a promising future for digital medical services.