In September, the Chiropractic Office Billing Precision Index (BPI) improved by 2.8 points, when compared to the August mark. This improvement was then followed by a decrease of 3.6 points according to the October Billing Precision Index. Overall, the October BPI obtained a score of 17.9, a grade of 0.2 points below the national average of 17.7. The Billing Precision Index is such an essential billing performance characteristic because it provides a proxy of the claims which are never paid. What is meant by a BPI score of 17.9 is that the average ten top performing payers working with Billing Precision clients have 17.9% of Accounts Receivable beyond 120 days.
The October index is unique in terms of both its membership and the two lead positions. Since its inception in June 2006, BPI has changed its membership between any two successive months. However the October index has maintained its September membership, while its two leaders, Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), both Illinois, even retained their September positions. The two tables below itemize the September and October indexes, including their memberships and their relative performance, as recorded in Billing Precision's system.
- Billing Precision Index 17.9 - October 2007
- Medicare Illinois 6.9
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois 11.5
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Pennsylvania 12.4
- Medicare New Jersey 12.6
- United Healthcare 13.7
- CIGNA 14.7
- Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey 18.6
- Aetna 19.5
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Georgia 33.1
- GEICO 33.4
- Billing Precision Index 14.3 - September 2007
- Medicare Illinois 5.9
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois 7.3 (up from 10 in August)
- CIGNA 11.2 (up to 16.4 in August)
- Aetna 11.7 (up from 12.7 in August)
- Medicare New Jersey 12.5 (up from 13.3 in August)
- United Healthcare 13.3 (down from 11.3 in August)
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Pennsylvania 14.8 (up from 28.3 in August)
- Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey 14.9 (up from 15.3 in August)
- GEICO 25
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Georgia 31.2 (down from 22.9 in August)
Coverage
BPI is rule-based, i.e., payer participation in the index is defined by a set of dynamic rules at the time of computation, rather than a static listing of specific payers. Therefore, any specific payer may start or discontinue participation in the index, dependent on satisfaction of the rule's conditions. The current selection of payers for participation in the BPI is based on one hundred top-volume providers and all payers across all United States that have processed more than six hundred claims through Billing Precision services.
Update Cycle
Billing Precision updates BPI on a monthly basis. In order to accommodate future growth of provided information, index combinations, and sensitivity across multiple indices, the Billing Precision Index employs Volume Weighting.
Information Provided
BPI computes the percent of Accounts Receivable beyond 120 days. Note that national average across all medical specialties of percent of accounts receivable beyond 120 days is 17.7%.
Summary
Chiropractic office managers use the rule-based index to benchmark their billing performance and guide its improvement over time. Note that a simple comparison of a payer's performance metric to a national benchmark determines if that payer performs well, or not. The rule-based approach to benchmarking also allows ranking of an entire set of payers by sorting them according to the same performance metric. Rule-based benchmarking also allows for the identification of elite payers, those that perform best in comparison to every payer in the country, as shown by the index-driven ranking. Finally, since the billing index stands for the entire set of such select participants, the number of times a given payer has participated in the monthly index determines its historic performance.
