"We’ll Get to It Later" Is the Most Expensive AR Strategy

Walk into any busy medical practice, and you will see the same scene: The waiting room is full, the phones are ringing, and the staff is moving at breakneck speed to manage patient care.

In this high-pressure environment, prioritization is a survival instinct. If a patient is standing at the front desk in pain, they get attention now. If a difficult insurance denial sits in a queue on a computer screen, it gets pushed to later.

"We are too busy today," the manager thinks. "We’ll focus on patients now and clean up the billing next week."

It feels like a responsible decision. After all, patients come first, right?

But in the world of revenue cycle management, this logic is fatal. We tend to treat Accounts Receivable (AR) like non-perishable goods—like a stack of canned food in a pantry that will be just as good six months from now as it is today.

But AR is not canned food. AR is fruit.

Every day a claim sits untouched, it starts to brown. It softens. It attracts flies. And eventually, it rots completely. "We'll get to it later" isn't just a delay tactic; it is an active decision to set your revenue on fire.

Here is why procrastination is the silent killer of cash flow, and why waiting even 30 days can cut the value of your work in half.

The "Banana" Principle: Why AR Rots

Financial experts often refer to the "Time Value of Money," but in medical billing, we call it the "Banana Principle."

If you buy a banana today, it is yellow, firm, and valuable. If you leave it on the counter for a week, it gets spots. If you leave it for a month, it is black mush. You can’t "save" a black banana. You just have to throw it away.

Medical claims follow the exact same trajectory of decay.

The Depreciation of Debt

Data from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) paints a stark picture of how quickly collectability drops:

• 0–30 Days Old: 95% chance of collection. (Fresh fruit)
• 60–90 Days Old: 70% chance of collection. (Starting to spot)
• 120+ Days Old: 30% chance of collection. (Rotting)

Why does this happen?

1. Patient Memory Fades: If a patient gets a bill two weeks after a visit, they remember the pain and the relief. They pay. If they get a bill six months later, they have moved on. They view the bill as an annoyance or a mistake. "I paid my copay!" they argue, and the collection effort becomes a battle.
2. Data Gets Cold: If a claim is denied for "Coordination of Benefits," you need to ask the patient to call their insurance. Good luck getting a patient to call their insurance company to fix an administrative error from last year.

By waiting to work the claim, you haven't just delayed the money; you have fundamentally changed the nature of the work from "processing" (easy) to "collections" (hard).

The Compliance Cliff: Timely Filing Limits

The other reason "Later" is dangerous is that the clock isn't just ticking on the claim's value; it is ticking on its legality.

Every insurance contract you sign has a Timely Filing Limit.

• Medicare: 1 year.
• Commercial Payers: Often 90 days or 180 days.

If you submit a claim on Day 91 of a 90-day contract, the insurance company doesn't just deny it; they laugh at it. You are legally barred from billing the patient. That revenue is 100% gone.

The "Appeal Window" Trap

Most practice managers know about the filing limit. What they forget is the Appeal Limit.Let's say you filed on time, but the claim was denied. You toss it in the "Later" pile.Most payers have a strict window for appeals/reconsiderations (often 60–90 days from the date of denial).

If you wait three months to look at that denial, you might find that while the original claim was timely, your right to appeal has expired. The door has slammed shut, and because you were "too busy" to knock, you are locked out of your own money.

The "Snowball Effect" on Staff

Procrastination doesn't just hurt your bank account; it breaks your team.

There is a psychological weight to a backlog. When a biller comes in on Monday morning and sees 15 denials in the queue, they think, "I can knock this out before lunch." They feel motivated. They attack the list.

But when that same biller comes in and sees 1,500 denials in the queue because the team has been "getting to it later" for six months, they don't feel motivated. They feel paralyzed.

The Defensive Crouch

When the mountain of work becomes insurmountable, human nature takes over. Staff start to subconsciously hide from the mess.

• They stop answering the phone because they know it’s an angry patient regarding an old bill they haven't fixed.
• They spend hours on "busy work" (like organizing files) to avoid looking at the terrifying AR report.
• They start cherry-picking the easy claims and ignoring the hard ones, causing the difficult debt to age even faster.

This leads to Burnout. Your best billers—the ones who actually care about doing a good job—will quit. They will leave not because the work is hard, but because the feeling of being perpetually behind is demoralizing. Now, you have a backlog and a staffing vacancy. The snowball gets bigger.

The "Cleanup Premium" (Why Fixing It Later Costs More)

There is a common misconception that pushing work to next month saves money on labor today. The opposite is true.

Fixing a claim today is cheap. Fixing a claim next month is expensive.

The Efficiency Loss

• Touching it Fresh (5 Minutes): When a claim is denied today, the patient's visit is fresh in the biller's mind. They know why the code was chosen. They know the insurance policy rules. They can fix and resubmit in minutes.
• Touching it Cold (20 Minutes): When a biller picks up a 120-day-old claim, they have to be a detective. They have to re-read the medical notes to remember what happened. They have to check if the insurance policy has changed since then. They have to look up the original denial code.

By delaying the work, you have effectively quadrupled the labor cost required to collect the same dollar. You are paying your staff to spend their time "getting up to speed" on old news instead of processing new revenue.

The Vendor Cost

Eventually, the "Later" pile gets so big that your internal team physically cannot fix it. You are forced to hire an external RCM company (like us) to perform an AR Cleanup Project.While these projects are effective, they come at a premium. You end up paying a percentage of collections to an outside firm to do work that your internal team could have done for "free" (salary) if they had just done it on time.

Conclusion: The "Touch It Once" Philosophy

"We'll get to it later" is not a strategy; it is a resignation. It is an admission that you are willing to accept 50 cents on the dollar because you are too disorganized to collect the full dollar today.

To stop the bleeding, you must shift your practice to a "Touch It Once" philosophy.

• Denials are treated as emergencies. They are worked within 48 hours, no exceptions.
• No claim is left behind. If a claim hits 45 days with no response, it is flagged and chased immediately.

Revenue Cycle Management is not about being smarter than the insurance company; it is about being faster than the clock.

Is your "Later" pile becoming a "Never" pile? Don't wait until the fruit rots. Contact Us Today for a complimentary AR Aging Analysis. We will show you exactly how much your delay is costing you and build a plan to recapture that revenue before the clock runs out.

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