Faster payments and ease of claims processing are just two goals for physician practices around the country, and many have found that a clearinghouse service is one way to achieve this.

Regulatory changes and industry innovations have helped propel the ambulatory clearinghouse market of late. One such vendor to benefit from this is Navicure, the Duluth, Ga.-based provider of Web-based accounts receivable management services for physician practices, which launched version 4.0 of its flagship product this past July.

“We noticed a huge difference from what we were doing before,” said Michael Delac, practice manager for Macon Medical Group, PC of Macon, Ga. “Navicure 4.0 gave us a way to understand the rejection analysis and we are able to look at a dollar impact on a practice.”

Using a clearinghouse product also allows Macon to monitor and make immediate changes in staff to increase productivity and revenue.

“Within five months, Navicure has helped us decrease average days in A/R from a horrific 47 days to 31 days,” said Delac.

The software is useful for payment analysis, according to Denise Junkin, a project manager who spearheaded the release of Navicure 4.0. It’s targeted at managers, and the reports are exported to Excel and broken down by facility, payer and provider, allowing users to see where the money is coming in, where the money should be coming from and where the denials are coming from, among other things.