7 Steps to Reduce Patient Registration Mistakes, Avoid Unpaid Claims

Improve your chiropractic office patient registration process, increase paid claims, and collect more money.

Anyone involved in running a chiropractic business knows that the patient registration process is vital. It also happens to be very routine.

When gathering even the most basic patient information, it’s easy for well-intentioned office staff to overlook details.

Unfortunately, incorrect or incomplete claims can lead to rejection, delays or denials, and even the smallest mistakes can have a negative impact on your bottom line.

From the minute a new patient begins the registration process, it’s crucial that you are asking for and receiving correct information. In addition, all that information must be accurately recorded in your billing software.

Follow these steps to Increase Paid Claims

Here are seven steps you can implement in your patient registration process to increase paid claims and improve your collection rates.

1. Confirm Basic Demographics

At the beginning of your patient registration process, make sure to review and verify basic contact information. For example, Medicare will reject a claim if:

• there is any variance in the patient’s name and spelling, compared to their own database.
• the generation is left off of the last name, like Sr., Jr., or III.
• the date of birth doesn’t match their files.
• the gender is misrecorded, either because it’s simply the wrong sex, or your diagnosis isn’t appropriate for
• the incorrect sex of the patient indicated on the claim.

2. Review the Patient’s Address

If your patient’s address doesn’t match the address in a payer’s database, your claim could be rejected.

Maintaining correct addresses can be particularly cumbersome, because when patients move, they often notify their insurance provider but forget to notify each of their healthcare providers.

Ask patients to verify their address on a regular basis, and ensure it’s correct in your billing system.

3. Verify Responsible Party Information

Having accurate responsible party information is essential for getting your claims paid.

It’s important to correctly record health insurance policy information in your patient’s account.

This will eliminate unnecessary claims rejections due to the payer’s inability to identify your patient as a member.

Also, when obtaining your patient’s health insurance information, remember to ask them about the policy holder.

Sometimes the patient is covered under their spouse’ or parent’s policy.

4. Verify Policy Holder Information

While some payers may allow the claim as long as the patient’s information is correctly indicated, other payers will reject it due to invalid policy holder information.

For example, your claim might be rejected if the policy holder’s date of birth is incorrect or missing.

It’s also important to ask if your patient has more than one policy, and if so, which is the primary payer, secondary payer, tertiary payer, etc.

5. Verify Eligibility

Once you have obtained the correct insurance and policy holder information, verify eligibility and accurately record that information in your billing system.

• Include the patient’s policy ID, group number (if applicable), policyholder information, and policy effective date.
• Verify that the policy is active and that the patient is covered for your services.
• Add the insurance information to your billing system, making sure to select the correct payer.
• Because some payers have multiple addresses for sending claims, be sure to choose the one indicated on the patient’s insurance card.
• Gather information needed for billing claims regarding the reason for treatment. This can include when symptoms began, and if there was a specific event or condition that caused the need for treatment.

6. Clarify Factors for Accident or Injury Treatment

If treatment is being sought due to an accident or injury, there are a number of additional factors that need to be clarified, including:

• the date of injury and whether the injury is related to employment, an auto accident, or other type accident, if the employer is responsible for payment, or if their workers compensation carrier is paying for treatment of the injured worker (if the injury is work-related).
• if a workers compensation claim has already been established, and if so, what is the claim number, the claims adjuster’s contact information, and where claims should be sent.

All of this information should be collected and verified during registration, and then added to the patient’s case information within their account.

7. Consider Chiropractic Billing Services

In spite of your best efforts, if your practice continues to experience patient registration mistakes that lead to unpaid claims, get help.

Consider implementing solutions that can eliminate errors and increase revenue.

These could include easy-to-use patient kiosks, expert billing services, and certified EHR and Practice Management chiropractic software.

Have questions?

Give our ACOM Health team of U.S.-based billing experts a call at (866) 286-5315 – we’ll be happy to help.