EHR Go Lab: Patient Tracking, Administrative & Financial Workflows

Working an aging report

Total A/R is $412,000, of which $94,000 is over 90 days. Decide what to do first.

1. 1

   Calculate the share over 90 days: 94,000 of 412,000 is about 23%.

   Against a 15-20% target this is high, so the aged bucket is where the problem is rather than the overall balance.

2. 2

   Sort the aged bucket by days remaining until each payer's filing or appeal deadline.

   Deadlines are absolute. A claim past its filing limit is worth nothing regardless of value, so anything close to a deadline is worked first.

3. 3

   Within that, sort by dollar value.

   Staff time is the constraint. Ten minutes recovering $2,400 beats ten minutes recovering $40 — and the small balances are usually a prevention problem rather than a collection one.

4. 4

   Group the rest by denial reason and look for a pattern.

   Twenty-nine authorization denials are one process problem repeated, not twenty-nine problems. Fixing the front-end process stops the thirtieth, which is worth more than recovering any single claim.

Result: Deadline-critical high-value claims worked first, and a specific process recommendation to take to the manager.

🔑 Deadline, then value, then pattern. Reporting the pattern is what changes next month's numbers.