In the healthcare industry providing valuable patient care requires constant management of multiple healthcare processes. Healthcare agents have to shuffle from one process to another like a running clock. To make sure every process is running on time, healthcare providers need constant manual effort, time, and speed. However, manually making sure every process is running smoothly, is an uphill task. This is the reason healthcare providers are counting on AI technologies to make sure patient care is provided on time. In our earlier blog posts, we talked about healthcare processes like Electronic health record management, patient scheduling, revenue cycle management, and others.

In this series of blogs on the healthcare process, next, we are going to talk about the Medicare payment process and how automation & AI can help simplify it.

What is the Medicare Payment Process?

Medicare payment process automation refers to the use of technology and software systems to streamline and optimize the payment processes within the Medicare healthcare system. Medicare is a government-sponsored health insurance program in the United States that provides coverage to eligible individuals, primarily those aged 65 and older, as well as certain younger individuals with disabilities.

What is the Medicare Payment Process?

The payment process within Medicare involves various steps, including

  1. Claims Submission

    Healthcare providers submit claims for the services they have provided to Medicare beneficiaries. These claims include details about the medical services rendered, such as diagnosis, treatment, and costs.

  2. Claims Adjudication

    Medicare administrators review and process the submitted claims. This involves verifying the eligibility of the beneficiary, assessing the appropriateness of the services provided, and determining the amount of reimbursement.

  3. Payment Calculation

    Medicare agents calculate the reimbursement amount based on established fee schedules and payment rules. This includes determining the allowable charges for specific medical services and procedures.

  4. Payment Disbursement

    Once the claims are approved, Medicare disburses payments to the healthcare providers for the covered services. Payments can be made to hospitals, doctors, clinics, and other healthcare facilities.

Challenges with the Medicare Payment Process

When it comes to the Medicare payment process, healthcare agents are required to extract data from multiple documents, validate them with a database, and calculate the dates for the insurance rollout period. Handling all these processes manually is time-consuming and challenging when there are high-volume records to check. Some other challenges include-

  1. Billing Errors
  2. Claim Denials
  3. Slow Reimbursement
  4. Technological Barriers
  5. Data Interoperability & Integration

How can AutomationEdge Help Simplifying the Medicare Payment Process?

AutomationEdge hyperautomation solution comes with intelligent data management, an AI-powered chatbot, and other solutions. This enables healthcare providers to perform all the tasks included in the Medicare payment process autonomously. With AutomationEdge AI bot healthcare agents can-

Medicare Payment Process Automation with AutomationEdge

  1. Downloads weekly Medicare payment reports from the system
  2. Performs primary plan service line validation
  3. Check the date of posting for the primary plan payment
  4. Changes responsibility to the secondary payer, if the primary plan date of posting is older than 45 days
  5. Change the responsibility to the patient if no response is received from the secondary payer when the payment date is older than 90 days
  6. Write off the balance if no response is received from the secondary payer and patient after 180 days.
  7. Generate audit report and move to next record

Conclusion

As per the report, medicare spending in healthcare is projected to rise from 10% of total federal spending in 2021 to 18% in 2032. With rising Medicare spending, Optimizing reimbursement for intricate Medicare payment challenges necessitates a technological solution capable of efficiently collecting, validating, and harmonizing extensive and diverse datasets originating from various channels. Intelligent automation is one such solution that can overcome obstacles and clear the path for faster payment processing. So are you ready to create faster medicare payment processes? Do contact us for a demo.

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