Denial rates hit 11.8% in 2024, according to Kodiak Solutions’ revenue cycle benchmarking data. That number represents real money leaving your practice every day. Each denied claim costs $57.23 to rework according to Premier Inc.’s 2024 survey, up from $43.84 just two years earlier. Behind every denial sits a breakdown somewhere in the billing process. Missing information. Inconsistent documentation. Communication gaps between your front desk and your billing team.
Healthcare billing follows seven essential steps from patient registration through final payment. Each step requires accurate data and clear communication with payers, patients, and your internal team. When claims flow smoothly through these steps, you get paid on time. When errors creep in, denials stack up, your billing team spends days fixing problems that shouldn’t have happened, and cash flow takes a hit.
Here’s the thing about billing errors. They don’t happen because your staff don’t know what they’re doing. They happen because of inconsistent execution. One person at the front desk captures complete eligibility information. Another person skips steps when the waiting room fills up. One biller writes detailed appeal letters. Another writes two sentences and hopes for the best. One registrar documents every confirmation number. Another forgets half the time. This variability kills you. Some claims sail through. Others with identical circumstances get denied.
This guide walks through each billing step with specific actions, common problems, and ready-to-use templates that cut out repetitive typing and prevent errors. You’ll see how to standardize your workflow so every claim moves through faster and cleaner, regardless of who’s handling it.
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What Is the Healthcare Billing Process?
Healthcare billing is how providers turn patient care into actual payment. It’s the full workflow from when someone schedules an appointment through when you finally get paid, including everything with patients, insurance companies, and your own team in between.
Here’s what makes healthcare billing different from normal business billing. You can’t just send an invoice and expect a check. Every claim needs proper diagnosis codes and procedure codes. You have to prove medical necessity. Different payers want things formatted different ways. Then your claim goes through multiple review layers, both automated systems and actual humans looking for reasons to deny it.
This process hits your cash flow directly. It determines how fast you get reimbursed. It affects whether patients understand their bills or call your office confused and frustrated. When billing works, patients know what they owe, claims process without drama, and you maintain predictable revenue. When it breaks down, you get confusing statements that patients ignore, claims denied for stupid preventable reasons, and cash flow gaps that make payroll stressful.
The same basic steps apply everywhere. Solo practices, specialty clinics, surgery centers, big hospital systems. The software might differ but the fundamentals stay consistent. Understanding these steps helps you spot where errors sneak into your workflow and where standardization pays off biggest.
Common Healthcare Billing Process Challenges
Rising Denial Rates Cost You Real Money
Denials reached 11.8% in 2024, up from 10.2% just a few years back, according to Experian Health’s research. This trend keeps getting worse. Now 41% of organizations report denial rates above 10%. If you’re processing 1,000 claims monthly with a 12% denial rate, that’s 120 denied claims every month you have to deal with.
The money side is brutal. Each denied claim costs $57.23 to fix according to Premier Inc.’s latest survey. That’s up from $43.84 just two years ago. Many denials never get resubmitted, so that revenue just disappears. Factor in the staff time for researching the denial, gathering documentation, writing appeal letters, and resubmitting everything, and the real cost climbs way higher than those numbers suggest.
Get this. Up to 49% of denials come from basic coding and documentation problems, according to Aptarro’s 2025 analysis. Stuff that could have been prevented with better processes up front. When your registration staff miss a required authorization number or your coders pick diagnosis codes that don’t match medical necessity, those errors don’t show up immediately. They surface as denials weeks later when the claim bounces back unpaid. By then the patient’s long gone and reconstructing clinical details gets messy.
Repetitive Communication Eats Up Hours Every Day
Your billing staff write the same explanations over and over. Appeal letters that sound almost identical. Responses to the same payer questions. Standard patient billing notices. This repetitive work doesn’t help anyone get better care, but it burns through staff time like crazy. When every claim needs custom-written correspondence, backlogs grow fast. Claims sit in queues waiting for someone to draft that appeal letter, write up the authorization request, or explain charges to a patient.
Everyone on your team handles identical situations differently. Some billers write detailed three-paragraph denial appeals. Others dash off two sentences and hope it works. This inconsistency creates random outcomes where appeals for identical cases succeed or fail based purely on whoever happened to write it up. Without standardized templates, your experienced staff can’t easily share what they know with newer people. All that knowledge stays locked in their heads instead of captured in formats everyone can use.
Payer-Specific Rules Are a Nightmare
Every payer has their own requirements. Different field formats, different documentation preferences, different authorization procedures, different appeal processes. Medicare wants things one way. Aetna wants them another way. Your local Blue Cross plan wants something completely different.
People working with practices like SimplePractice talk about “weird funky claim filing rules” that change by payer and require specific field mappings when you’re working in clearinghouses like Change Healthcare or Availity. These payer quirks rarely get documented anywhere official. They exist as tribal knowledge that experienced billers pass down to new hires through informal training that may or may not happen.
Staffing Shortages Make Everything Worse
Here’s what Experian Health found: 43% of revenue cycle teams don’t have enough people. Meanwhile, research from Umbrex and HFMA shows a third of healthcare finance leaders say workforce shortages are their biggest headache. Experienced billing people are retiring or leaving healthcare entirely, taking all their knowledge with them.
When someone experienced leaves, they take everything. All those mental shortcuts about specific payer quirks. Workarounds for when systems don’t cooperate. Hard-won knowledge about what actually gets claims paid versus what the manual says should work. New people need 30 to 90 days to get productive, according to standard timelines in revenue cycle training programs. During that ramp-up time, your experienced staff cover the extra workload while also trying to train. This creates a nasty cycle. Overwork drives more people to quit. More quitting means more training. More training means more overwork.
The 7 Essential Billing Process Steps in Healthcare
Every healthcare claim follows the same basic path from registration through final payment. Understanding these seven steps helps you spot where errors creep in and where standardization pays off biggest. More importantly, knowing what communication and documentation each step needs lets you build templates that eliminate repetitive work.
Step 1: Patient Registration and Insurance Verification
Billing starts when a patient schedules an appointment or walks in for service. Front desk staff collect demographics, insurance details, contact information, and authorization numbers. This data flows into every step that follows. Errors here emerge as denials weeks later when the claim bounces back unpaid.
What needs to happen: Collect complete patient demographics including full legal name, date of birth, address, and contact numbers. Capture insurance information with payer name, policy number, group ID, and subscriber relationship. Verify insurance eligibility and benefits in real time. Determine patient financial responsibility, copay, coinsurance, and deductible status. Obtain prior authorizations for services requiring pre-approval. Document all verification calls with date, time, representative name, and confirmation numbers.
Common mistakes: Transcription errors when manually entering insurance card information. Outdated insurance on file from previous visits. Missing authorization numbers for services requiring pre-approval. Wrong subscriber relationship like documenting a child on a parent’s plan incorrectly. Failure to identify secondary insurance coverage. These errors seem small at registration but become major problems when claims get denied for eligibility issues weeks later.
Front desk staff handle dozens of insurance verification calls daily. Each call follows the same script. Confirm patient eligibility. Verify coverage for today’s services. Document the confirmation number. Without templates, staff either skip documentation steps when rushed or spend several minutes writing notes. Insurance verification templates standardize this workflow and ensure nothing gets missed.
Organizations with standardized registration workflows get 20 to 30% fewer eligibility-related denials compared to practices with inconsistent processes, according to revenue cycle management best practices. The investment in front-end accuracy pays dividends throughout the entire revenue cycle.
Step 2: Charge Capture and Documentation
After providing care, clinical staff document the patient encounter in the EHR. This documentation must support the services billed, demonstrate medical necessity, and include all elements required for the codes submitted. At the same time, the practice must capture all billable charges: every procedure, supply, medication, and service provided.
Critical actions: Document the patient encounter thoroughly in the EHR with symptoms, examination findings, assessment, and treatment plan. Clinical notes must support the level of service billed. Capture all billable charges including procedures, supplies, and medications. Documentation must demonstrate medical necessity for services performed. Record time accurately for time-based services like counseling and critical care. Link diagnosis codes appropriately to procedures performed.
Common mistakes: Incomplete documentation that doesn’t support billed service level. Missing charges for billable supplies or procedures. Lag time between service and charge entry that creates discharged-not-final-billed status. Diagnosis codes that don’t support medical necessity. Failure to document time for time-based services. Missing required elements for specific evaluation and management levels.
Physicians and clinical staff hate documentation because it feels like redundant data entry. They already discussed the treatment plan with the patient. Why write it again for the chart? This documentation resistance creates incomplete records that billing staff can’t use to support claims. Clinical documentation templates solve this by making thorough documentation faster than incomplete documentation. When providers can insert complete assessment and plan sections with a few keystrokes, they’re more likely to document thoroughly.
Charge capture works best when it happens immediately at the point of care. Modern EHRs include charge capture functionality designed to speed up this process, but many practices don’t use these features effectively. Automated charge capture generates billable charges from documented services, eliminating the lag time between service and charge entry. This keeps revenue from sitting in discharged-not-final-billed status where the patient has been treated but charges haven’t been entered for billing.
Step 3: Medical Coding
Medical coders translate the provider’s clinical documentation into standardized codes that payers recognize. ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes describe why the patient needed care. CPT procedure codes describe what services were performed. HCPCS codes describe supplies and equipment. Accurate coding is essential because incorrect codes trigger immediate denials.
The coding process requires reviewing complete clinical documentation before code assignment. Coders select ICD-10 codes that accurately reflect documented diagnoses. They choose CPT codes that match procedures performed. They apply appropriate modifiers when required. They ensure diagnosis codes support medical necessity for procedures. Coders must follow payer-specific coding guidelines and abstract all billable services from the documentation.
Common coding mistakes: Selecting outdated codes since codes change annually. Missing specificity requirements for fourth, fifth, and sixth digits. Incorrect modifier usage or missing required modifiers. Unbundling procedures that should be reported together. Diagnosis codes that don’t support medical necessity. Missing secondary diagnoses that affect reimbursement. Code sequencing errors that change claim meaning.
Medical coding requires extensive reference to coding guidelines, payer policies, and clinical documentation. Coders must remember which modifiers apply in which circumstances, which diagnosis codes require additional specificity, and which procedures require specific supporting documentation. Having quick access to coding reference information speeds up the coding process and improves accuracy. Organizations with standardized coding workflows and reference templates maintain higher coding accuracy rates than those where every coder develops their own reference system.
The clean claim rate benchmark stands at 95%, according to MD Clarity’s revenue cycle metrics. Organizations using automated claim scrubbing get 15 to 20% fewer rejections compared to manual review alone. Elite performers hit 98% or higher clean claim rates through a combination of front-end accuracy, real-time charge capture, thorough documentation, accurate coding, and automated claim scrubbing before submission.
Step 4: Claims Submission and Clearinghouse Processing
After coding, claims get submitted electronically to payers, typically through a clearinghouse that scrubs claims for errors before forwarding them to payers. The clearinghouse validates that all required fields are populated, codes are valid, and the claim meets basic formatting requirements. Claims that pass scrubbing get transmitted to payers for adjudication.
Claims submission involves generating an electronic claim in 837 file format. Submit the claim through a clearinghouse for initial scrubbing. Correct any errors flagged by clearinghouse edits. Confirm successful transmission to the payer. Track claim acknowledgment from the payer. Monitor claim status through the clearinghouse portal. Document submission date and clearinghouse confirmation numbers.
Common errors at this stage: Missing or invalid NPI numbers. Incorrect place of service codes. Invalid code combinations that trigger unbundling edits. Missing or invalid authorization numbers. Incorrect patient demographic information. Missing required modifiers. Procedure and diagnosis code mismatches that don’t make clinical sense.
Every clearinghouse has unique field requirements and error messages. Staff working with Change Healthcare need to know different workflows than those using Availity or Waystar. When claims reject with cryptic error codes, billers must look up what the error actually means and how to fix it. Without clearinghouse reference templates, staff waste time searching through help documentation or calling support for answers they’ve already found before.
Organizations that run automated claim scrubbing before submission catch formatting errors, invalid code combinations, missing required fields, and payer-specific requirement violations before the claim reaches the payer. This front-line quality control prevents denials and speeds up payment. The healthcare billing process benefits significantly from pre-submission validation that catches errors when they’re easiest to fix.
Step 5: Claim Adjudication and Payment Posting
The payer receives the claim and determines how much they’ll reimburse. This adjudication process involves verifying coverage, checking for duplicates, reviewing medical necessity, applying fee schedules, calculating patient responsibility, and issuing payment or denial. Payers send an Explanation of Benefits or Electronic Remittance Advice showing their payment decision. Billing staff then post these payments to the patient’s account.
Payment posting requires monitoring claim status with payers. Receive and process ERA or EOB documents. Post insurance payments accurately to patient accounts. Post contractual adjustments as write-offs. Post patient responsibility amounts. Identify any denials or downcoded claims. Reconcile payments against expected reimbursement. Flag discrepancies for follow-up.
Common mistakes: Payments posted to the wrong patient or service date. Contractual adjustments applied incorrectly. Patient responsibility amounts calculated wrong. Denials not flagged for appeal workflow. Partial payments not investigated for additional payment opportunity. Coordination of benefits errors when multiple insurers are involved.
Payment posting is repetitive but requires accuracy. Each ERA contains dozens or hundreds of claims with payments, adjustments, and patient responsibility amounts that must be posted to the correct patient accounts. Staff post payments all day using the same adjustment codes and following the same workflows. Standardized payment posting templates ensure consistency and speed up this high-volume work.
When insurance has paid their portion, any remaining patient responsibility must be clearly documented. This includes copays collected at the time of service, coinsurance percentages applied to the allowed amount, deductible amounts if the patient hasn’t met their annual deductible, and amounts related to non-covered services. Accurate patient responsibility calculation matters because incorrect amounts lead to patient disputes and collection challenges.
Organizations should track their payment posting accuracy rates and days between payment receipt and posting. Delays in payment posting create inaccurate account balances and delay patient billing. The faster payments get posted, the faster you can bill patients for their remaining responsibility and close out accounts.
Step 6: Denial Management and Appeals
When claims get denied, billing staff must quickly analyze the denial reason, figure out if it’s correct or appealable, gather supporting documentation, and file an appeal within the payer’s deadline, typically 30 to 120 days. Effective denial management requires understanding denial reason codes, researching payer policies, writing detailed appeal letters, and tracking appeal outcomes.
Denial management involves reviewing denial reason codes on EOB or ERA documents. Categorize denials by type, clinical versus administrative. Research payer policies for appeal requirements. Gather supporting clinical documentation. Write detailed appeal letters with specific references to policy. Attach all required supporting documentation. Submit appeals within payer deadlines. Track appeal status and follow up. Analyze denial patterns to prevent future denials.
Common denial reasons: Medical necessity not demonstrated, which requires additional clinical documentation. Authorization not obtained or authorization number missing on the claim. Service not covered under the patient’s specific plan. Timely filing limit exceeded because the claim wasn’t submitted within the payer’s deadline. Duplicate claim where the service was already paid. Incorrect coding showing procedure and diagnosis mismatches. Missing or invalid information in required fields. Services bundled with other procedures according to coding edits.
Appeal success depends on thoroughness. Payers deny appeals that don’t reference specific policy language, fail to include supporting documentation, or don’t address the denial reason directly. Writing effective appeals from scratch is time-consuming. Each appeal takes 30 to 45 minutes to research policy, draft the letter, and gather attachments. Organizations with standardized appeal templates and workflows see 25 to 30% higher appeal success rates compared to ad-hoc approaches, according to revenue cycle management performance benchmarking.
The denial management process requires both clinical understanding and administrative persistence. Billing staff need to understand the clinical rationale for services to write compelling medical necessity appeals. They also need to know payer policies well enough to cite specific coverage criteria. This combination of clinical and administrative knowledge makes denial management one of the most challenging aspects of healthcare billing.
Healthcare organizations should track denial rate by reason code, appeal success rate by denial type, average time to file appeals, percentage of denials appealed versus written off, and revenue recovered through successful appeals. These metrics help identify where process improvements can prevent future denials and where appeal efforts deliver the best return.
Step 7: Patient Billing and Collections
After insurance processes the claim, any remaining patient responsibility including copays, coinsurance, and deductibles must be collected from the patient. This final step involves generating patient statements, sending collection notices, setting up payment plans, handling patient questions about their bills, and escalating to collections when necessary.
Patient billing requires calculating accurate patient responsibility amounts. Generate clear and understandable patient statements. Send statements on a regular schedule, typically monthly. Follow up on unpaid balances with phone calls. Offer payment plan options for large balances. Process patient payments and post to accounts. Send collection letters according to compliance requirements. Transfer accounts to a collections agency when appropriate.
Common challenges: Patients confused about what they owe versus what insurance pays. Balance billing complaints on out-of-network claims. Disputes over estimated versus actual costs. Patients unable to pay full balances at once. Lack of communication leading to ignored statements. Inconsistent collection policies across different staff members. HIPAA violations in collection communications when staff share too much protected health information.
Patient billing communication requires a careful balance. You need to collect payment while maintaining a positive patient relationship. Collection letters must be persistent without being threatening, clear without being accusatory, and compliant with HIPAA and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act regulations. Without templates, staff handle patient billing communications inconsistently, creating patient complaints and legal risks.
Research shows healthcare is often expensive for patients, and many struggle to pay medical bills even when they want to. Patient collection rates typically range from 50 to 70% according to industry benchmarks, far below the 99% collection rates for insurance payments. This gap exists because patients face financial constraints, receive confusing bills they don’t understand, or dispute charges they believe should have been covered by insurance.
You can improve patient collections several ways. Provide clear billing explanations that break down what insurance paid versus patient responsibility. Offer multiple payment options including online portals and credit card auto-pay. Create payment plans that fit patient budgets rather than practice convenience. Train staff in empathetic collection conversations that acknowledge financial stress. Ensure all collection communication complies with HIPAA and FDCPA requirements.
How TextExpander Speeds Up Every Billing Step
Healthcare billing isn’t just data entry and code selection. It’s constant communication. Every claim denial requires an appeal letter. Every eligibility verification requires documentation. Every patient balance requires explanation. Every payer inquiry requires a detailed response. This communication work consumes huge amounts of staff time because it’s repetitive but requires accuracy.
You can’t copy-paste last month’s denial appeal because patient names, dates, and clinical details differ. But the structure, policy references, and supporting documentation requests stay identical. This is where TextExpander transforms billing workflows. Instead of typing the same appeal letter structure, eligibility verification documentation, or patient statement explanation for the hundredth time, billing staff type a short abbreviation and TextExpander inserts the complete template with fill-in fields for the variable information.
The average billing staff member types more than 5,000 words daily in claims communication. TextExpander can cut that by 40 to 60% according to productivity studies in healthcare settings. The time savings add up fast. A full-time biller working 40 hours weekly spends roughly 15 to 20 hours on repetitive typing. Cutting even half of that repetitive work recovers 7 to 10 hours per week per staff member. That’s time that can go toward higher-value activities like denial prevention, staff training, or process improvement.
Every team member produces consistent quality work using proven templates rather than recreating communications from scratch. Your newest biller includes the same required policy references in appeals as your most experienced team member because they’re both using the same template.
Error reduction happens naturally when templates include required elements that might otherwise be forgotten under deadline pressure. When your authorization request template includes fields for clinical justification, diagnosis codes, and proposed date of service, staff can’t submit incomplete requests. When your payment posting template includes fields for adjustment codes and patient responsibility calculation, posting errors decrease.
Knowledge preservation matters critically in healthcare billing where staff turnover creates knowledge gaps. When experienced staff leave, their payer-specific knowledge traditionally walks out the door with them. But when that knowledge lives in shared snippet libraries, it stays with the organization. New hires use the templates that successful billers developed, shortening the learning curve from 90 days to 30 to 45 days.
Start with your highest-volume, most repetitive communications. Insurance eligibility verification scripts and documentation templates eliminate front-end errors. Appeal letters for the top 10 denial reasons including medical necessity, authorization, timely filing, and coding errors standardize your most important correspondence. Patient billing explanation templates by payer type reduce confusion and disputes. Prior authorization requests by procedure category ensure completeness. Payer-specific submission checklists for your top 10 payers prevent submission errors.
Build your snippet library by capturing the communications your best billers already create, then make those templates available to your entire team. This approach ensures templates reflect real-world needs rather than theoretical best practices. Your experienced billers know what works with specific payers, what language gets claims paid, and what documentation prevents denials. Putting that expertise in shareable templates scales their knowledge across your entire department.
The ROI calculation is straightforward. TextExpander starts at $8.33 per user monthly, with denials costing far more to rework, $125 billion wasted annually in healthcare on billing rework according to industry estimates, and 40 to 60 hours per month saved per full-time biller. Even conservative estimates show 10 to 15 times return on investment within the first six months.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main steps in the healthcare billing process?
Healthcare billing follows seven essential steps: patient registration and insurance verification, charge capture and clinical documentation, medical coding, claims submission through clearinghouse, claim adjudication and payment posting, denial management and appeals, and patient billing and collections. Each step needs accurate data from the previous step because errors compound as claims move through the cycle. When registration captures incorrect insurance information, that error won’t surface until the claim gets denied weeks later for eligibility issues.
What’s the difference between the billing process and revenue cycle management?
The billing process is the operational, step-by-step workflow for submitting claims and collecting payment. Revenue cycle management is the broader strategic oversight that includes billing plus financial analysis, performance metrics, compliance monitoring, and process improvement. Think of billing as the tactical execution and RCM as the strategic management layer. An organization might have excellent RCM strategy but poor billing execution, or vice versa. Both are necessary for financial health.
What causes most claim denials?
Up to 49% of claim denials result from basic coding and documentation issues according to revenue cycle analytics research. The most common specific causes are missing or invalid prior authorization accounting for 18 to 22% of denials, medical necessity not demonstrated causing 15 to 18%, incorrect patient demographic information responsible for 12 to 15%, coding errors or mismatches at 10 to 12%, and timely filing limits exceeded at 8 to 10%. Most of these denials could be prevented with better front-end processes and standardized workflows.
What is a clean claim rate and why does it matter?
Clean claim rate is the percentage of claims that get processed and paid on the first submission without any errors, rejections, or additional information requests. The industry benchmark is 95% according to revenue cycle management standards, though elite performers hit 98% or higher. Clean claims get paid faster, typically within 14 to 30 days versus 60 to 120 days for problematic claims. They cost nothing to rework. Low clean claim rates directly impact practice cash flow because revenue gets delayed while denied claims work through appeals.
How long does it typically take to get paid after submitting a claim?
Payment timing depends on whether the claim is clean or requires rework. Clean claims typically take 14 to 30 days for most commercial payers, 14 to 21 days for Medicare, and 30 to 45 days for Medicaid. Claims requiring additional documentation add 15 to 30 days. Denied and appealed claims take 45 to 120 days depending on appeal level. Complex or disputed claims can take 90 to 180 days or longer. Organizations with high clean claim rates of 95% or better typically see average days in accounts receivable of 30 to 35 days. Those with denial rates above 15% often see accounts receivable stretching to 50 to 60 days or more.
Should we handle billing in-house or outsource it?
This decision depends on your practice size, complexity, and current performance. Consider in-house billing if you have volume to support dedicated billing staff, typically 500 or more claims monthly, you want direct control over the revenue cycle, and you can invest in staff training and technology. Consider outsourcing if your current denial rate exceeds 10%, your days in accounts receivable exceed 45 days, you lack specialized coding expertise, or you’re spending more than 6 to 8% of collections on billing operations. Many practices use a hybrid approach, keeping charge capture and payment posting in-house while outsourcing claim submission, denial management, and specialized coding.
How can templates and text expansion tools reduce billing errors?
Templates eliminate variability by ensuring every team member captures the same critical information in the same format. When eligibility verification follows a standard template, staff won’t forget to document confirmation numbers or patient responsibility amounts. When appeal letters use proven templates with required policy references, your appeal success rate improves. Text expansion tools like TextExpander make templates practical by letting staff insert them with short abbreviations rather than maintaining separate document libraries. This speeds up repetitive communication while maintaining accuracy, cutting both errors and workload at the same time.
Conclusion
The biggest opportunity for improvement isn’t buying new billing software or hiring more coders. It’s standardizing the communication and documentation work your team already does. Templates eliminate the variability that creates denials while freeing staff from repetitive typing that doesn’t add value. Healthcare billing compliance improves when everyone follows the same proven processes consistently.
Start by mapping your current billing workflow and identifying where communication delays or errors happen most. Build templates for those high-friction points first. Even basic templates for your most common denial appeals, eligibility verification documentation, and patient billing explanations will cut workload and improve consistency in ways you can measure.Your billing process doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be consistent, documented, and continuously improving. The practices that hit 95% or higher clean claim rates and keep days in accounts receivable below 35 don’t have larger teams or better software. They have standardized workflows that every team member follows the same way, every time. The healthcare billing process becomes more efficient through systematic standardization rather than heroic individual effort.

