03After the claim
A/R follow-up services
A/R follow-up services chase every unpaid claim before it ages past the point of recovery.
We'll look at your aging by bucket and tell you what's worth working.
We work the aging by payer and bucket, find out why each claim has not paid (pended, lost, denied without a remit, paid to the wrong place), fix it, and keep going until the claim is paid or has a documented reason it cannot be.
This work starts once the claim has gone out. Buy it on its own or pair it with our other billing services, stage by stage.
Last reviewed by the Remitwright billing team. Editorial policy
Stage 03 of 04
- Before the visit
- The claim
- After the claim
- Oversight
What we do
What A/R follow-up covers
- Every claim without a response by the payer's normal adjudication window followed up through portals, 276/277 status checks or phone
- Aging worked oldest and largest first, inside each payer's timely filing and appeal limits
- Claims paid to the wrong place, or paid and never posted, traced and recovered
- Pended claims answered: records sent, questionnaires returned, coordination of benefits confirmed
- Partial payments reviewed for underpayment and balance billing rules
- Every touch logged on the claim: date, payer contact, reference number, outcome, next date
- Patient balances handed to patient billing support with a clear reason
- Aging reported by bucket, payer and provider on your weekly report, with the dollars that moved since the last one
When it is skipped
What goes wrong when A/R follow-up is skipped
The claim that was never received
The practice sent it; the payer has no record. Nobody checked status at thirty days. At day ninety-five the practice learns the claim was lost, and the filing limit was ninety. Proof of timely filing from the clearinghouse might save it; without follow-up, nobody knew to look.
The pend that waited for a form
A commercial payer pended a claim for a coordination of benefits questionnaire sent to the patient. The patient never returned it. The claim sat for four months. A follow-up call at day thirty would have found the pend and moved it.
Touching the small ones last
The A/R list is sorted by amount. The small claims at the bottom never get touched and age out one by one. Each is small. Together they are a payroll.
In depth
Accounts receivable management for insurance A/R
Accounts receivable management for a medical practice is the work of moving insurance balances from claim to payment. Every open claim sits in an aging bucket by date of service, carries its payer's filing and appeal limits, and has a reason it has not paid yet. Managing the A/R means knowing that reason for every claim, not just the total at the bottom of the aging report.
Your biller runs it from the aging report inside your practice management system. Claims are cut by payer, bucket and deadline, checked with the status tools each payer offers, and written off only with a recorded reason and your approval. Formally denied claims go to denial management, balances the patient genuinely owes go to patient billing support, and a backlog left by a previous biller is quoted on its own as old A/R recovery.
The scope is the insurance and patient A/R that medical claims create. Bookkeeping receivables, such as invoices to other businesses, are outside it and stay with your accountant.
How we run it
How we run A/R follow-up
Prioritize
The aging is cut by payer, bucket and filing deadline. Anything near a limit goes first; then oldest, then largest.
Status
Claim status checked electronically where the payer supports it, by portal or phone where it does not, and the result logged.
Resolve
The claim is fixed: resubmitted with proof, records sent, corrected, or moved to denial management or patient billing.
Repeat
Every open claim gets a next-action date, and the queue is worked by those dates, not when someone has time.
Report
Aging by bucket on the weekly report, with dollars collected, moved and written off, so the trend is visible.
What you receive
What you receive every week
Aging by bucket, payer and provider
The five buckets, with the movement since the last report and the payers behind it.
Follow-up log
Every claim touched, with what was learned and what happens next, visible in your system.
Weekly line in your report
Claims followed up, resolved, escalated and written off with reason.
Worked example: the 61 to 90 day bucket
A hypothetical urgent care's 61 to 90 day bucket holds a lot of one commercial payer. Status checks show the payer has them all pended for a provider taxonomy mismatch after a group NPI change, and never sent a remit. The biller fixes the enrollment record, resubmits the batch as corrected claims with the original dates, and sends proof of timely filing with each. The bucket empties as the payer reprocesses the batch.
Questions
Questions about A/R follow-up
What is a good days-in-A/R figure?
When do you follow up on a claim?
Do you call payers?
What happens to balances you cannot recover?
Is this the same as denial management?
Is A/R follow-up the same as accounts receivable management?
Can we outsource A/R follow-up and keep the rest of billing in-house?
Next step
We'll look at your aging by bucket and tell you what's worth working.
Three quick questions. No patient data. A billing specialist reads every request and replies in writing.
- Three questions, about two minutes
- No patient data, no software to buy
- A written reply from a biller, not a sales deck
You answer three questions
A billing specialist reads them
A written reply by email
Prefer email? sales@remitwright.com
Request received
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- A billing specialist reads your answers and replies by email.
- If a look at real claims makes sense, we agree read-only access under a BAA first.
- You get a written summary of what is worth working and what it would take. No commitment.
While you wait: see the sample weekly report or read how switching works. You can also download the sample weekly report (PDF).