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Revenue Cycle Management: The Five Stages Where Practices Lose the Most Revenue and What to Do About Each One 

Revenue leakage in medical practices is rarely random. It usually occurs at specific, predictable points in the revenue cycle, regardless of a practice’s size, speciality, or billing model.

The good news is that these patterns make revenue loss easier to identify and prevent. Understanding where your revenue cycle management process loses revenue provides a clear roadmap for improving collections and protecting your practice’s financial performance.

Stage 1: Patient Access and Eligibility Verification

The revenue cycle starts when a patient schedules an appointment, and one of the most common revenue losses begins here.

If insurance coverage is not verified in real time before the visit, or rechecked on the day of service, coverage changes, expired plans, and benefit limitations can go unnoticed until the claim is denied.

Eligibility denials are among the most preventable in medical billing. Verifying coverage at every patient encounter, rather than relying on previous visits or periodic checks, helps eliminate most of these avoidable denials.

Stage 2: Prior Authorization Management

Prior authorization is one of the few stages where missed revenue can become permanent.

When a service that requires prior authorization is performed without approval, the resulting denial is often impossible to recover, regardless of how efficiently the billing team handles it. In many cases, retrospective authorization is unavailable, and delaying treatment after the service has already been delivered is not an option.

The real loss is not just the denied claim. It is revenue that was earned through patient care but cannot be collected because an authorization requirement was missed before the appointment.

Stage 3: Charge Capture and Coding

Incomplete charge capture is one of the most overlooked sources of revenue loss because it creates no denial, alert, or warning.

If a service is provided and documented but never entered as a billable charge, no claim is generated, no payment is pursued, and the revenue is lost until a charge capture audit identifies the issue, if one is ever performed.

Coding errors add to this problem. Under-coding, where services are billed at a lower level than the documentation supports, remains a common revenue integrity gap in speciality practices. It often happens because of routine habits and the lack of regular coding reviews.

Stage 4: Claim Submission and Denial Management

The clean claim rate, the percentage of claims paid on the first submission, is one of the strongest indicators of revenue cycle performance.

Every claim that requires correction or resubmission creates extra work, delays reimbursement, and increases the risk of missing timely filing deadlines that can permanently eliminate revenue.

The biggest challenge is not a single denied claim. It is recurring denial patterns that continue because only the individual denials are addressed instead of fixing the root cause. Identifying trends and preventing them upstream reduces repeated denials and improves long-term performance.

Stage 5: Payment Posting and AR Follow-Up

Payment posting is where many practices overlook payer underpayments.

If payments are posted without comparing them to contracted reimbursement rates, underpayments can easily be written off without being noticed. Across multiple payers and high claim volumes, even small discrepancies can lead to significant annual revenue loss.

Accounts receivable follow-up is the final checkpoint in the revenue cycle. Claims that remain unpaid for more than 90 days move closer to timely filing limits, making recovery increasingly difficult. An AR aging report should be viewed as a live indicator of revenue at risk, not simply a historical report.

How GoSource Addresses Each Stage

GoSourceMD is a HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 certified revenue cycle management company serving U.S. practices in OB/GYN, cardiology, urgent care, gastroenterology, and mental health.

Our workflow addresses every stage of the revenue cycle through real-time eligibility verification, prior authorization management before service delivery, charge capture reviews, payer-specific claim scrubbing, denial prevention, payment verification against contracted rates, and proactive AR follow-up.

Every account also includes consistent outcome reporting, giving practices clear visibility into performance instead of relying on assumptions.

Visit gosourcemd.com to learn how we manage the complete revenue cycle for practices across the specialties we serve.

Stop Losing Revenue at the Same Five Points

If your practice is losing revenue at any of these five stages, and most practices lose revenue at more than one, the problems can be identified, addressed, and prevented with the right operational approach.

Visit gosourcemd.com to speak with our team. We’ll help identify where your revenue cycle is losing revenue and show you how GoSource can help improve performance.

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RCM Services: The Difference Between a Revenue Cycle That Runs and One That Performs

Every practice has a revenue cycle, but not every practice has one that performs.

The difference is more than operational. A revenue cycle that runs processes claims, receives payments, manages denials, and generates reports that show activity. A revenue cycle that performs does all of that while answering a much more important question: Is the practice collecting the full value of every service it delivers?

Running vs. Performing

A revenue cycle that runs submits claims on time, receives payments, works on denials, and keeps operations moving. A performing revenue cycle goes further by continuously measuring the difference between revenue earned and revenue collected.

It starts with charge capture by confirming every billable service has been documented before a claim is created. Missed charges often go unnoticed because no claim is ever submitted, meaning there is no denial or alert to expose the lost revenue.

Claim scrubbing is another key difference. Instead of checking only formatting, high-performing RCM services review claims against payer-specific denial trends to prevent predictable rejections before submission.

The same approach continues during payment posting. Payments are verified against contracted reimbursement rates so underpayments can be identified and challenged while recovery is still possible.

Denial management also becomes proactive. Rather than resolving denials one by one, performing revenue cycle analysis trends across payers, providers, and service types to prevent the same issues from recurring.

Why Many RCM Services Stop at Running

Many RCM services focus on activity because activity is easier to measure. Claim volumes, payment totals, and denial counts create reports that appear productive.

Performance is different. It requires measuring what the revenue cycle achieved against what it should have achieved. That level of reporting demands accountability for financial outcomes, not just completed tasks.

Practices usually recognise this gap after building better reporting internally or partnering with an RCM provider that measures performance as a standard part of its workflow.

What a Performing RCM Partner Delivers

An effective RCM partner verifies charge capture before claims are created, uses payer-specific claim scrubbing, validates payments against contracted rates, tracks denial patterns, and reports meaningful metrics such as clean claim rate, first-pass resolution rate, denial rate by category, and net collection rate.

GoSource Builds Revenue Cycles That Perform

GoSourceMD is a HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 certified revenue cycle management company supporting U.S. practices across OB/GYN, cardiology, urgent care, gastroenterology, and mental health. Our workflow includes charge capture reviews, payer-specific claim scrubbing, payment verification, denial prevention, and outcome-based reporting designed to maximize revenue.

If you cannot clearly explain last month’s revenue performance with real numbers, your revenue cycle is likely running instead of performing. Visit gosourcemd.com to see how GoSource helps practices close that gap.