Pitched an AI Billing Tool? Fix Your Process First
Send us Fan Mail How many AI billing tools have you been pitched in the last few months? If you are like most practice owners, more than any other vendor in years. Some of these tools are very good, and we are piloting one ourselves. But if your billing process is not clean, adding AI on top of it will only break it faster. In this episode, Dr. Heather Signorelli shares how we are running our own AI pilot alongside our billing team. She also gives you a simple framework to decide where AI belongs in your revenue cycle and how to evaluate any vendor before you sign. Fix the process first. If eligibility breaks because the right information is not captured at the front desk, a tool will not fix it. Get workflows out of people’s heads and onto paper, with one set of policies, trainings and checklists across every location. Then decide what to automate. Automate the work, keep the judgment with your people. AI fits high-volume, rules-based, repetitive work where the right answer is known. Complex denials, judgment calls and quality assurance stay with humans. Run a controlled pilot. Start with one painful process in one or two practices. Check 100% of the AI’s work at the start and track how fast the review time comes down. If your team has to recheck everything forever, that is not automation. Define success before you start. Know your denial rate, clean claim rate, eligibility issues and claim speed today. Decide what accuracy the tool must hit and who on your team owns the evaluation. Ask the hard questions. Ask about accuracy on claims like yours, who catches the errors, what the contract says about performance, and what an exit looks like if the vendor is sold. Where AI fits in billing today: Eligibility and benefits: work clearinghouse failures, check payer portals, escalate what it cannot fix Claim scrubbing: check every claim against payer rules and coding edits Payment posting: handle checks that fail auto posting and pull missing EOBs A/R follow up: claim status review and the first layer of denial work Payer contracts: prepare the data and test offers against the CPT codes you actually bill Your one action this week: if you are evaluating an AI vendor, ask them which of your billing metrics their tool will move, and by how much. RESOURCES Free Metrics Audit Review (a physician-led second opinion on your numbers): https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/metrics-audit-natrevmd Free Billing Performance Scorecard (six numbers, green, yellow or red, plus a one-page 90-day plan): https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/natrevmd-billing-performance-scorecard-actionable-plan NatRevMD AI Kit (prompts and tools for using AI in your practice): https://eligibility.natrevmd.com/natrevmd-ai-kit-tool Website: https://natrevmd.com IN THIS EPISODE Why every practice is getting pitched AI right now AI on a broken process just breaks it faster Multi-site practices: getting the process out of people’s heads How we are running our own AI pilot Where AI fits, and where humans still win How to evaluate an AI vendor and define success Contracts, performance terms and your exit plan Red flags that the tool is not working





