Old accounts receivable is money you have already earned. The care was given and the claim exists. What is missing is the follow-up: a call to the payer, a corrected claim, an appeal, or a statement to the patient. When that does not happen, the balance ages, and past a certain point the payer is no longer obliged to pay it at all.
Our AR recovery services take that backlog, whether it built up over a few busy months or was left behind by a previous biller, and work it down in the order that recovers the most money before the deadlines close.
Why old AR stops being collectible
Every payer has a timely filing limit, the time allowed from the date of service to file the claim. Medicare allows 12 months. Commercial plans and Medicaid programs set their own limits, often much shorter, and the contract decides. A claim that was never received, or was rejected and never resubmitted, can quietly pass that limit while it still sits in your system as "open."
Appeal windows work the same way. A denial that is not appealed in time is final. That is why the order of work matters more than the speed.
How an AR recovery project runs
- Pull and sort. We export your open AR and sort it by payer, age, value and the deadline that applies to each claim.
- Find the status. For each claim: was it received, is it in process, was it denied, was it paid to the wrong place, or does the payer have no record of it?
- Work the earliest deadlines first. Claims about to pass a filing or appeal limit go to the front of the queue, whatever their size.
- Then the largest balances. After the urgent ones, effort goes where the money is.
- Fix and resubmit. Corrected claims, appeals with records, and proof of timely filing where the payer lost the original.
- Close what cannot be collected, with a reason. Every write-off is documented, so you know what was lost and why.
What you see
A weekly status while the project runs, then a closing report: what was collected, what was closed and why, and the causes behind the backlog. Most backlogs have two or three causes, such as one payer's claims that were never received or a credentialing gap that made a provider's claims unpayable, and those get fixed so the backlog does not rebuild.
Credit balances count too
AR clean-up is not only about money owed to you. Overpayments and duplicate payments sit in the same ledger, and they have to be refunded. Medicare requires an identified overpayment to be reported and returned within 60 days. We list credit balances alongside the receivables so they are handled, not discovered in an audit.
A one-time project, or ongoing
Some practices hand us the backlog once and keep billing in house. Others move to full revenue cycle management afterwards so AR stays current. Denials found during the project are worked the same way as our denial management service.
AR recovery FAQs
How old is too old to recover?
It depends on why the claim is unpaid. A claim the payer never received is usually lost once the filing limit passes, unless you can prove it was sent in time. A claim that was denied may still be open to appeal. We check each claim's actual deadline rather than giving up on everything over a certain age.
How is AR recovery priced?
We quote it after reviewing your aging report, since the size, age and payer mix of the backlog decide how much work it takes.
Do you need access to our system?
Yes, read and work access to your practice management system and the payer portals you use. We work inside your system, so payments post where they always have.
Get your old AR reviewed
Send us an aging report. We will tell you how much of it is still collectible and which claims are closest to their deadlines.
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