Be proactive, read your mail!

So if you are a Tufts Provider, October 1st is a special day. What? You don’t know what I am talking about? Well I know for a fact that as of October 1st if you submit a B&W copy of your paper claim form, it will be rejected. Yep, no red CMS-1500, no checky. I am sure hundreds of my colleagues are going to find this out on October 20th, when they receive rejected claims letters, and they’ll be ranting about the system. Yes, the system sucks, but it is the system you choose to get paid by, so read your mail.

The above does not really effect me, I have a billing service and we submit all of our claims electronically (CMS-billing.com btw, they rock). But I wanted to share that with you for a couple of reasons. First, to hopefully save you some headaches, but second, and more important to give an example of how keeping your business in the black requires dealing with what we therapists often consider “mundane.”

We’re all about bearing witness to people’s suffering; helping them transform their lives; healing relationships; changing behaviors that hurt them and others. That’s the lofty profession we want to see ourselves in, and yes, it is a lofty profession. But we’re also in business, and if you don’t get with the program you’ll be out of business. When you get provider updates from the companies you work with, READ THEM. Yes, they are boring, but they will save you time and money. It takes 5 minutes to read the “60-Day Notifications” articles in the Tufts newsletter for example. A lot less time then it takes filling out a claim, mailing it, waiting 3 weeks, finding out it was rejected, calling to be sure what that weird code means, talking to someone, scrambling to find some forms, realizing you don’t have them, running to Staples to order more, waiting for them to come in, and resubmitting so that you can get paid 3-6 weeks later because you still use paper claims.

Bear witness to your own suffering; transform your life by working smarter; heal your relationship with your inner businessperson whom you need to VALUE; and change your behavior around the administrative aspects of your business, it is hurting you and those around you (unless you never ever gripe to your spouse about the paperwork, get nasty on a call to a service rep about something you should have known about, or get distracted when you are sitting with a patient because you haven’t been paid yet.)

5 minutes. Read your mail.

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