6 keys to stopping revenue leaks in medical billing

Denied claims are bleeding revenue — and you may not even realize it. 

The good news? Tebra data shows billing teams using structured denial strategies reduce denials by 21% and get paid faster.

In Tebra’s exclusive webinar, "Getting paid: Stop hidden revenue leaks in your medical billing," revenue cycle management (RCM) experts Sarah Ford and Terri Ann Joy bring decades of experience to share tactics to help you reduce denials, speed up reimbursements, and recover lost revenue.

Our webinar and accompanying guide provide guidance on how to:

Sixty percent of denied claims never get resubmitted — meaning more than half of denied claims never make it back to payers. That's money just sitting there waiting to be recovered.

To prevent this from happening at your practice, you must implement a rapid response system to review denials.

Here’s the essence:

By making rapid categorization a standard practice, your team can resolve denials faster and recover more revenue.

But prevention doesn’t stop with workflows — it starts with the people and tools behind them. Surprisingly, only 13% of billing companies offer monthly training, even though payers frequently update their guidelines. Monthly training helps your team stay current, reduce errors, and catch issues before they lead to rejections.

Also, automated real-time eligibility and benefits checks are essential. These tools confirm active coverage and highlight potential issues like prior authorization or service limitations, all before the patient even sees the doctor.

This is worth saying again: Payer-specific submission guidelines matter. A generic approach won’t cut it — your documentation and claims need to reflect what each payer requires to minimize avoidable denials.

When you combine people, process, and technology, your practice is far better positioned to stop revenue loss before it starts.

Denials often get lost in the shuffle — especially when appeal windows are short and your team is juggling hundreds of claims. That’s why tracking and flagging deadlines must be a structured, automated part of your process.

As stated earlier, up to 60% of denied claims never get resubmitted — possibly because no one was tracking them. Denied claims come with strict timelines for resubmission and appeal, and once those deadlines pass, the revenue is gone for good.

To better manage deadlines, consider:

Ultimately, tracking and flagging deadlines is more than a task — it's a mindset shift. You’re not reacting to denials. You’re controlling the timeline and giving your team every opportunity to recover lost revenue.

Not every denial can be fixed with a simple correction — some require a formal appeal. And without a structured approach, revenue slips through the cracks. That’s why a defined, consistent appeals process is essential.

In the webinar, Sarah and Terri Ann walk through a 4-step framework for appeals that helps practices stay organized, meet deadlines, and increase their success rate:

Tip from the webinar: Use artificial intelligence (AI)-generated appeal letters to reduce errors, save time, and increase your approval rate — especially for common denial types.

Denials aren’t random — they follow patterns. The key is knowing how to spot them early and turn that insight into action.

In the webinar, Sarah and Terri Ann explain how to analyze denials by payer, code, and service type to uncover your practice’s top revenue risks. Once you see the trends, you can make informed decisions without constant retraining.

They also highlight how to:

Manual billing processes slow teams down, introduce errors, and let denials slip through the cracks. The solution? Let automation do the heavy lifting.

In the webinar, Sarah and Terri Ann walk through how practices are using automation to recover revenue faster and reduce administrative strain — without adding headcount.

Some of the key automation strategies include:

Auto eligibility checks are a game changer — they eliminate excess manual work, are easy to use with automation, provide you with helpful information, and mostly eliminate those kinds of eligibility type errors.

"Let the computer handle the boring stuff,” as Terri Ann puts it — freeing up your team to focus on higher-value work.

The revenue cycle isn’t static — payer rules, code sets, and documentation requirements are always changing, and so should your approach to denial management.

Even well-run billing operations can’t afford to go on autopilot. Continuous optimization is how high-performing teams stay efficient, adaptable, and ahead of revenue threats.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Stay updated on payer policies and coding updates. As Sarah shares in the webinar, “Just because a process worked last quarter doesn’t mean it’ll work next quarter.”

Bonus tip: Use internal metrics like cost per denial, appeals turnaround time, and denial recovery rate to identify hidden inefficiencies and track progress over time.

Denials may feel inevitable right now — but with the right tools and strategies, most are entirely preventable.

By making small, strategic changes to how your practice tracks, manages, and appeals claims, you can stop revenue from slipping through the cracks.

Use the takeaways from this guide as a lens to assess your current processes:

Whether you're running an independent practice or leading a billing team, these improvements can add up to major gains in cash flow, efficiency, and performance.

Download the slides here for a full breakdown of how top-performing billing teams reduce denials, recover lost revenue, and build smarter, scalable RCM operations.

Watch the full webinar to see real examples, expert Q&A, and deeper insights from Sarah and Terri Ann.