Accounts receivable follow-up
A/R is where the consequences of everything upstream become visible. Working it well is less about volume of activity and more about sequence: which claims, in which order, with which payer, before which deadline.
How we work accounts receivable
Aging worked in a deliberate order
We segment receivables by aging bucket, payer, balance and denial status, then work them in an order driven by recoverability and deadline risk rather than by whatever is at the top of the report. High-value claims approaching a filing limit come before low-value claims with months of runway.
Claim status review
Every aged claim is checked against the payer's record before anyone picks up a phone. Status first, action second.
Documented payer follow-up
Call reference numbers, representative names, dates and commitments are logged against the account.
Underpayment review
Paid is not the same as paid correctly. We compare remittance against expected reimbursement and pursue variances — incorrect allowed amounts, missed contractual terms, reprocessing errors and partial payments that were never reconciled. Underpayments are among the most commonly overlooked categories in A/R because the claim shows as closed.
Timely-filing protection
Deadlines are tracked by payer so appealable claims don't age into permanently unrecoverable ones.
Resolution tracking
Every worked claim ends in a documented outcome — paid, appealed, adjusted or recommended for write-off.
Reporting your team can act on
Aging by bucket and payer, movement between periods, denial categories driving the balance, and the claims that need a decision from your practice rather than another follow-up call. The point of A/R reporting is to make the next action obvious.
The metrics that actually matter
Total A/R on its own tells you very little — it moves with volume. The useful measures are compositional.
- Days in A/R — how long revenue takes to convert to cash. Commonly cited physician-practice benchmarks sit under 40 days, per MGMA data as summarised by industry analysts.
- Percentage over 90 days — the share of receivables in the bucket where recovery odds decline sharply.
- A/R by payer — concentration in one payer usually means a process problem specific to that payer, not a general one.
- Denied balance within A/R — how much of the balance is unpaid because it was refused, rather than because it is simply pending.
Benchmark figures describe the healthcare industry generally and are not representations about results for any Sure Rev Solution client.
Backlogs and clean-up projects
A/R work is often where practices first bring us in, usually because a backlog has built up during a staffing gap, a system migration or a period of rapid growth.
For that kind of engagement we start by assessing what is actually recoverable. Some aged claims are worth pursuing; some are past filing deadlines and pursuing them costs more than it returns. You will get a straight answer on which is which, with the reasoning, rather than an invoice for effort spent on claims that were never going to pay.
Let's build a healthier revenue cycle.
Tell us where your revenue cycle is under pressure right now. We'll walk through what's happening, what we'd take on, and whether working together makes sense for your practice.