The Top 5 Reports for Mental Health Billers
Why Understanding Billing Reports Matters
For behavioral health professionals, staying compliant and financially stable is crucial for longevity. To ensure smooth operations, mental health billers rely on a variety of reports to manage their entire operations. Understanding these reports is not only for billers, but for therapists and behavioral health leaders too. This helps ensure transparency, catch potential issues, and improve financial health.
Equipping billers with a mental health EHR that provides detailed, easy-to-use reports optimizes clinical operations. It saves time, minimizes errors, and ensures timely reimbursements. Without access to the right reports, billing inefficiencies can lead to denied claims, delayed payments, and administrative headaches. Below, we’ll explore the top five reports that every mental health biller needs to stay on top of their work.
1. Claims Accounting Report
What It Does
The Claims Accounting Report provides a comprehensive overview of submitted claims, payment statuses, and outstanding balances. It helps track the revenue cycle from claim submission to reimbursement, making it an essential tool for billers.
Why It Matters
- Identifies unpaid claims: Tracks claims that are still awaiting payment, reducing revenue leakage.
- Flags denials and rejections: Ensures billers can quickly follow up on denied claims and appeal when necessary.
- Simplifies reconciliation: Helps match payments to specific claims, ensuring accuracy in financial reporting.
✅ Key Insight: Reviewing Claims Accounting Reports regularly helps reduce lost revenue by identifying patterns in claim rejections and underpayments.
2. Client Services Report
What It Does
The Client Services Report tracks billable services provided to each client, including session dates, CPT codes, and service locations. This report plays a crucial role in confirming that the team has correctly documented and billed all provided services.
Why It Matters
- Ensures accurate billing: Confirms that all sessions provided have corresponding claims.
- Prevents compliance issues: Helps verify that services billed align with payer policies.
- Improves forecasting: Assists in predicting revenue based on scheduled services.
✅ Key Insight: Running this report alongside claim processing data helps identify missing or incorrectly billed services before submission.
3. Intake Report
What It Does
The Intake Report compiles data on new clients, tracking demographics, referral sources, insurance eligibility, and assigned providers. It also provides a summary of how long it takes for a client to receive an appointment after a referral. This is important for compliance with CARF. This report ensures smooth onboarding and helps assess the effectiveness of referral networks.
Why It Matters
- Improves intake efficiency: Identifies bottlenecks in the onboarding process.
- Tracks referral sources: Helps understand which sources bring in the most clients.
- Supports marketing efforts: Provides data on client trends and demographics to refine outreach efforts.
✅ Key Insight: Reviewing intake trends over time helps clinics optimize marketing strategies and streamline onboarding procedures.
4. Authorization Summary Report
What It Does
This report monitors the authorization status for clients whose insurance requires prior approval for services. It details the number of approved sessions, used sessions, and remaining sessions.
Why It Matters
- Prevents claim denials: Ensures providers don’t exceed authorized session limits.
- Enhances client continuity of care: Avoids gaps in treatment due to lapsed authorizations.
- Streamlines renewals: Helps billers request new authorizations before the current ones expire.
✅ Key Insight: Running an Authorization Summary Report weekly helps prevent claim rejections caused by missing or expired authorizations.
5. Insurance Report
What It Does
The Insurance Report gives a summary of insurance coverage for all active clients. It includes policy details, copays, deductibles, and benefit limits.
Why It Matters
- Verifies coverage before sessions: Ensures clients have active insurance before appointments.
- Prevents billing surprises: Identifies changes in insurance plans that may impact reimbursement.
- Improves financial planning: Helps forecast revenue based on payer mix.
✅ Key Insight: Keeping this report updated helps avoid claim denials caused by lapsed or incorrect insurance information.
The Power of Advanced Filters in Reports
Beyond having access to these five key reports, it’s critical to use an EHR system that can effectively support them. One way this happens is through extensive filtering options to refine data insights. Filters allow billers and administrators to drill down into specifics, making reports far more actionable.
Some key filters that enhance reporting include:
- Date ranges (to track trends over time)
- Payer type (to analyze claim approvals by insurance company)
- Service type (to evaluate which services bring in the most revenue)
- Provider name (to track productivity and reimbursement by clinician)
- Session status (to quickly see pending, paid, or denied session claims)
These filters allow behavioral health practices to make data-driven decisions regarding revenue forecasting, staffing needs, and payer negotiations. Without granular data, it’s difficult to identify trends or address inefficiencies in billing processes.
Choosing an EHR That Delivers Powerful Reports
Not all EHRs provide the level of reporting detail needed for efficient mental health billing systems. That’s where CheckpointEHR becomes a good option (learn more here). CheckpointEHR offers many reports, robust filters, and real-time data insights. This helps billers and mental health professionals improve revenue and make operations smoother.
For more insights into optimizing medical billing and reporting, check out these resources:
Investing in the right behavioral health EHR and ensuring billers have access to the right reports transforms financial health and administrative efficiency. It is what therapists need to be able to focus on what truly matters: client care.