AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup
Ongoing follow-up keeps this month's claims moving; this is the one-time project that goes back into the aged and legacy backlog you have effectively given up on. MedPrecision recovers old A/R, contractual underpayments, and abandoned denials -- and defends the Medicare take-backs that surface when old claims get re-examined -- before the timely-filing clock closes them for good.
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What Are AR Recovery Services?
AR recovery services are a bounded project that recovers cash from a practice's oldest and most neglected receivables rather than managing current claims. The scope is legacy and backlog A/R: claims left behind in a prior billing system after a conversion, aged denials that were never appealed, contractual underpayments where the payer paid below the contracted rate, and defense against Medicare recoupments and take-backs. It differs from ongoing A/R follow-up in three ways -- it is time-boxed, it targets balances already treated as uncollectible, and it works the older aging buckets (91-120 and 121+ days) that routine follow-up has passed by. Every engagement starts with an eligibility screen that separates recoverable balances from excluded ones, and ends with a roll-forward showing the gross balance, the eligible balance and the cash actually recovered. On targets, the one freely published figure for physician practices that we found is the American Academy of Family Physicians' days in A/R -- below 50 days at minimum, with 30 to 40 preferable -- which the AAFP states as practice-management guidance with no population, sample or data year behind it. We found no free primary source that publishes a target for the share of A/R over 90 days, so we report yours rather than quote a number at you.
- One-time project scope: legacy, backlog, and post-conversion A/R -- not day-to-day follow-up
- Timely-filing triage against the 42 CFR 424.44 one-year Medicare limit before balances expire
- Eligibility screen first: what is in scope, what is excluded and why, and the fee basis, all agreed up front
- Reported as a roll-forward -- gross balance, eligible balance, cash actually recovered -- from your own aging file
AR recovery services are a one-time, project-based cleanup of the aged and legacy receivables a billing operation has stopped working -- not the day-to-day follow-up on current claims. Where our accounts receivable follow-up services keep this month's claims moving through the 30/60/90-day buckets, MedPrecision's AR recovery services go backward into the balances a practice has effectively written off in its head: claims stranded in an old practice-management system after a billing transition, denials that were never appealed, and contractual underpayments no one ever calculated. The window is narrow. Under 42 CFR 424.44, Medicare fee-for-service claims for services furnished on or after January 1, 2010 must be filed no later than one calendar year after the date of service, and the regulation's exceptions are narrow -- an error or misrepresentation by CMS or one of its contractors, retroactive Medicare entitlement, or a State Medicaid agency or Medicare Advantage or PACE organization recovering its payment six months or more after the service. Outside those, Medicare will not pay a late claim, so every month an old-AR backlog sits untouched, a slice of it becomes permanently non-recoverable. Our AR recovery services begin with a recoverability review rather than a work queue: every balance is screened for eligibility -- still inside its payer's filing or appeal window, an insurance balance rather than a patient one, not already in active appeal elsewhere, not a credit balance or contractual adjustment miscoded as a receivable -- and anything that fails the screen is documented as excluded rather than quietly worked and billed. What survives is worked as a defined project with a start and an end, on a fee basis agreed before any account is touched, and reported back as a roll-forward: gross balance at intake, eligible balance after the screen, cash actually recovered.
Who This Service Is For
The State of AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup in 2026
Backlogs are the norm, not the exception. In an MGMA Stat poll conducted 9 November 2021 with 587 applicable responses, 49% of practice leaders said their days in A/R had increased that year, against 15% who saw a decrease and 37% who saw no change; the same MGMA article relays a median of 13.54% of total A/R past 120 days in multispecialty practices, a figure MGMA draws from its 2021 DataDive Cost and Revenue dataset (MGMA Stat, 11 November 2021). The underlying DataDive product is licensed and not public, so that free article is as close to the primary source as a reader can get, and we found no free source that publishes an observed median days in A/R for physician practices at all. That aged tail is where recovery projects live. The one published target we found for the same population is the AAFP's: days in A/R below 50 days at minimum, with 30 to 40 days preferable, and an adjusted collection rate of 95% at minimum -- practice-management guidance stated with no population, sample or data year behind it. For the share of A/R over 90 days, and for write-offs as a share of expected collections, we found no free primary target at all, and we would rather say so than repeat a number whose chain of custody ends in a vendor-sponsored article. The recoverable pool is large precisely because so little of it is worked: KFF found HealthCare.gov Marketplace insurers denied 19% of in-network claims in 2024 while consumers appealed less than 1% of them -- payer-side data on qualified health plans, not a provider-side rate, but a fair read on how rarely a denial is ever challenged. And the Medicare timely-filing limit under 42 CFR 424.44 means every month of delay converts more of that pool into permanent write-off, which is why recovery is a project you run on a deadline, not a task you get to eventually.
What Is Breaking Right Now
A/R over 120 days that ongoing follow-up has passed by and staff have mentally written off
Legacy claims stranded in a prior practice-management or EHR system after a billing transition
Contractual underpayments where the payer paid below the contracted rate with no denial to flag it
Aged denials that were never appealed and are approaching their appeal or timely-filing deadline
Medicare recoupment demand letters that need a redetermination filed by Day 30 to stop the take-back before it starts on Day 41
Common AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup Mistakes to Avoid
Treating old A/R as a slow-motion write-off instead of a project
Left inside routine follow-up, 121+ day balances get a token call and then age out. MGMA's own A/R guidance makes the point that the longer a medical bill goes unpaid the harder it is to collect, so a backlog worked at normal cadence mostly expires unrecovered.
Pull the aged tail out of the daily queue and work it as a time-boxed recovery project with its own triage, targets, and end date, separate from ongoing follow-up.
Working the backlog oldest-first instead of by filing deadline
Staff burn the first weeks on the oldest or largest balances while claims two weeks from their filing limit expire silently -- under 42 CFR 424.44 a Medicare claim filed more than one calendar year after the date of service is outside the filing window, and the regulation's exceptions are narrow enough that most late claims simply are not payable.
Screen the entire backlog against payer filing deadlines first and work what is closest to expiring, regardless of a balance's age or dollar value.
Chasing denials while ignoring underpayments
Underpayments carry no denial to flag them -- the payer simply paid below the contracted rate -- so they hide in the paid column. The payer-contract guidance HFMA publishes notes that contractual variances often appear in accounts not resolved through normal collection efforts, quietly draining margin.
Calculate expected payment at the account level from the payer contract and reconcile it against what was actually paid, so variances surface as recoverable balances.
Rebutting a Medicare recoupment instead of appealing it
A rebuttal does not stop recoupment -- under CMS's timeline, take-backs begin by Day 41 regardless. Providers who only rebut watch the money get pulled from current payments while they wait.
File a redetermination by Day 30 of the demand letter; under Section 1893(f)(2)(A) a valid first- or second-level appeal generally halts recoupment until a decision issues.
What We Handle
Legacy A/R Inventory & Triage
We import your full aging report -- including balances stranded in a prior practice-management or EHR system after a billing transition -- and screen every open balance for eligibility before any of it enters a work queue. In scope: insurance balances still inside the payer's filing or appeal window, aged denials never worked, and payments that fell below the contracted rate. Excluded, and reported to you as excluded rather than billed as work: balances past their filing window with no exception available, accounts already in active appeal with another party, credit balances and contractual adjustments miscoded as receivables, patient-responsibility balances already placed with a collection agency, and claims your documentation cannot support. MGMA's aging buckets -- 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and 121+ days -- frame the inventory; recovery concentrates on the 91-120 and 121+ tiers that ongoing follow-up has already passed by.
Timely-Filing Risk Screen
Every legacy claim is screened against its payer's filing limit first. Under 42 CFR 424.44, Medicare fee-for-service claims for services furnished on or after 1 January 2010 must be filed no later than one calendar year after the date of service, so we rank the backlog by which balances are about to expire and work those before anything else -- because a claim past its filing window is not a recovery target, it is a documented write-off. Commercial and Medicaid filing limits are often shorter and vary by payer and by contract, so each payer's own published limit is what we screen against, not a rule of thumb.
Underpayment & Contract-Variance Recovery
Underpayments -- a payment short of the contracted amount with no denial attached, or the residue of a partial denial -- go uncaught because nothing bounces to flag them. We apply the contract-management workflow HFMA publishes: load the contractual provisions, calculate the expected payment at the account level, track variances automatically, and escalate the unresolved ones through a named contract-compliance owner with training in contract interpretation rather than through ad-hoc phone calls. That guidance is a bylined article by a contract-management vendor executive, written for hospital finance staff and published on hfma.org -- a workflow, not HFMA research and not a target number. Whether your specific payer contracts and fee schedules can be loaded, and whether variance recovery runs standalone or inside a broader cleanup, is confirmed at scoping.
Aged Denial Backlog Recovery
Un-worked denials are the largest untapped pool in most old A/R. KFF's analysis of the CMS Transparency in Coverage file found that HealthCare.gov Marketplace insurers denied 19% of in-network claims in 2024 and that consumers appealed less than 1% of them -- payer-side data covering HealthCare.gov qualified health plans only, not a provider-side denial rate and not your payer mix, but a fair read on how rarely denials get challenged at all. We re-open aged denials still inside their appeal and filing windows, rebuild the documentation, and appeal by root cause rather than blanket-refiling.
Recoupment & Take-Back Defense
When old claims are re-examined, Medicare overpayments surface -- CMS attributes them to incorrect coding, insufficient documentation, medical-necessity errors, and processing errors. Once a MAC issues a demand letter the clock starts: interest accrues if the debt is not repaid within 30 days, standard recoupment begins by Day 41, and delinquent debt is referred to the U.S. Treasury by days 126-150. We defend take-backs by filing a redetermination by Day 30 -- which, under Section 1893(f)(2)(A), generally stops recoupment until an appeal decision issues.
Billing-Transition & System-Conversion Cleanup
A system conversion is where A/R goes to die: balances that never migrate from the old platform keep aging while staff learn the new one. We extract open A/R from the legacy practice-management or EHR system, reconcile it against the new system, and work the orphaned balances as a standalone project so a go-live does not quietly cost you a quarter of receivables. Which source systems we can extract from is confirmed during scoping.
Overpayment Handling & 60-Day Compliance
Recovery cuts both ways: an old-AR audit can surface money the practice was overpaid. Under Section 1128J(d), a self-identified Medicare overpayment must be reported and returned to the MAC within 60 days of identification, subject to a six-year lookback. We document what is genuinely owed back versus what is a defensible payment, so a cleanup improves your compliance posture instead of creating new exposure.
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Find the Cash in Your Old A/R
Send us your aging report. We will run the eligibility screen against it, show you which aged balances, underpayments and denials are still recoverable and which are excluded and why, quote the fee basis in writing, and scope a one-time recovery project -- separate from your ongoing follow-up -- to go get the rest.
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Our AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup Methodology
Recoverability Triage, Not Bucket Order
We do not work an aging report from the top. Every legacy balance is scored on days remaining to its filing deadline, dollar value, denial reason, and payer behavior, and the queue is ordered by what is both collectible and closest to expiring. MGMA's aging buckets (0-30 through 121+) frame the inventory; the 91-120 and 121+ tiers are where the project concentrates.
Timely-Filing Window as the First Gate
Before a claim enters the work queue it passes a filing-limit check. Under 42 CFR 424.44, a Medicare claim for a service furnished on or after 1 January 2010 must be filed within one calendar year of the date of service, with only narrow exceptions: error or misrepresentation by CMS or one of its contractors, retroactive Medicare entitlement, and a State Medicaid agency or Medicare Advantage or PACE organisation recovering its payment six months or more after the service. Each of those extends filing only through the last day of the sixth calendar month after the triggering event, and no extension is granted under the contractor-error exception when the request is made more than four years after the date of service. A balance outside its window is routed to documented write-off, not wasted effort.
Account-Level Underpayment Reconciliation
For variance recovery we calculate the expected payment per account from the payer contract and fee schedule and compare it to what was actually paid -- the contract-management workflow HFMA publishes for contractual underpayment recovery. Variances are pursued with the payer through a defined escalation path owned by a named contract-compliance person rather than through one-off phone calls. That guidance is a vendor-authored article written for hospital finance staff, so we use it as a method and not as evidence of any recovery rate.
Appeal-First Recoupment Defense
Recoupments are defended on CMS's own clock. We file a redetermination by Day 30 of the demand letter because, under Section 1893(f)(2)(A), a valid first- or second-level appeal generally stops recoupment until a decision issues, while a rebuttal does not. Where warranted and in scope, appeals continue through reconsideration by a QIC, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, and the Medicare Appeals Council.
Clean Handoff to Ongoing Follow-Up
A recovery project is finished when the backlog is resolved, not left half-worked. We post recoveries, document genuinely uncollectible balances for clean write-off, handle any self-identified overpayment under the Section 1128J(d) 60-day rule, and close with a roll-forward -- gross balance at intake, balances excluded by the eligibility screen and why, eligible balance worked, cash recovered and posted, balance still open -- handed to your ongoing A/R follow-up team along with a cleaned aging report so the aged tail does not rebuild.
AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup: MedPrecision vs Alternatives
| Feature | MedPrecision | In-House | Other Providers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | One-time, time-boxed project targeting legacy, backlog, and post-conversion A/R, with a written eligibility screen, a named exclusion list and a fee basis agreed before work starts | Aged balances left in the daily queue, worked only when staff have spare time | Ongoing follow-up contract with no dedicated legacy-backlog workstream |
| Timely-Filing Triage | Entire backlog screened against payer filing deadlines first (42 CFR 424.44 for Medicare); near-deadline balances worked before all else | Deadlines tracked manually if at all; balances lost to filing limits | Aging worked oldest-first, letting near-deadline claims expire |
| Underpayment Recovery | Expected payment calculated at the account level and reconciled against contracted rates to surface variances -- the contract-management workflow HFMA publishes | Underpayments invisible because nothing denied to flag them | Denials worked; contractual variances not calculated |
| Recoupment / Take-Back Defense | Redetermination filed by Day 30 to stop recoupment under Section 1893(f)(2)(A); appeals carried up the five Medicare levels as scoped | Rebuttal filed (which does not stop recoupment) or demand paid without appeal | Take-backs treated as write-offs rather than appealed |
| Close-Out | Roll-forward of gross balance, excluded balances, eligible balance and cash recovered, plus a cleaned aging report, a documented uncollectible list and 60-day overpayment handling | No defined end state; backlog rebuilds | Recovered dollars reported without a clean handoff or compliance close-out |
How the Transition Works
How we deliver ar recovery services & old-ar cleanup for your practice.
Backlog Import & Scoping
We take a read-only export of your full aging report -- and, for a post-conversion project, the open A/R from the prior system -- and agree the project scope in writing: minimum claim age, minimum balance, payers in and out, which balance types are excluded from the screen, and the fee basis. The fee is either a contingency percentage of cash actually recovered and posted, or a fixed project fee, and which one applies is set before any account is touched. We publish no rate card here because the basis depends on the age, payer mix and documentation state of your backlog -- you get it in writing at scoping, not after the work.
Triage & Timely-Filing Risk List
The backlog is stratified by recoverability and by days remaining to each payer's filing deadline. We deliver a triaged inventory and a timely-filing risk list so the balances closest to expiring are visible and worked first, rather than working the aging report top to bottom.
Recovery Execution
We work the recoverable queue by category: re-file legacy claims still inside their window, calculate and pursue underpayments, appeal aged denials by root cause, and file rebuttals or redeterminations to defend recoupments -- documenting a specific next action on every account so nothing stalls.
Reconciliation & Handoff
Recovered balances are posted, genuinely uncollectible balances are documented for clean write-off, and any self-identified overpayments are handled under the 60-day rule. You get the project as a roll-forward built from your own file: gross balance at intake, the balances the eligibility screen excluded and the reason for each, the eligible balance that actually entered the work queue, the cash recovered and posted against it, and what remains open at handoff. We hand a cleaned aging report back to your ongoing A/R follow-up team so the backlog does not rebuild.
What Reporting and Visibility Looks Like
Transparency is built into every engagement. You will always know where your revenue stands and what actions are being taken on your behalf.
Monthly KPI Dashboards
Track collection rates, denial trends, days in A/R, and payer-level performance with dashboards delivered on a fixed schedule.
Real-Time Claim Tracking
See claim status updates in real time so you never have to wonder where a payment stands or when follow-up is happening.
Quarterly Business Reviews
Detailed reviews with actionable recommendations covering denial root causes, payer trends, and revenue recovery opportunities.
Proactive Alerts
Automated alerts when key metrics shift, so issues are caught and addressed before they affect your bottom line.
AR Recovery Services & Old-AR Cleanup Key Terms
- Old / Legacy A/R
- Receivables aged well beyond routine follow-up -- typically the 91-120 and 121+ day buckets, or balances stranded in a prior billing system after a conversion -- that a practice has effectively stopped working. The target of a one-time recovery project rather than of ongoing follow-up.
- Timely-Filing Limit
- The deadline by which a claim must reach the payer. For Medicare fee-for-service it is one calendar year from the date of service for services furnished on or after 1 January 2010, under 42 CFR 424.44, whose exceptions are narrow; commercial payers set their own, generally shorter than Medicare's. A claim filed outside the window is not payable unless an exception applies, which is what an appeal of a timely-filing denial has to establish. The first gate in any recovery triage.
- Contractual Underpayment
- A payment that falls short of the contracted or expected amount with no denial attached, or the result of a partial denial. Because nothing bounces, underpayments hide in the paid column; recovering them requires an account-level expected-payment calculation against the loaded contract terms.
- Recoupment (Take-Back)
- When a payer recovers a prior overpayment, typically by offsetting it against future payments. For Medicare, a MAC begins standard recoupment by Day 41 of the demand letter unless a valid redetermination is filed by Day 30 (Section 1893(f)(2)(A)).
- 60-Day Overpayment Rule
- Under Section 1128J(d) of the Social Security Act, a self-identified Medicare overpayment must be reported and returned to the MAC within 60 days of identification, subject to a six-year lookback. It governs how overpayments surfaced during an old-A/R audit must be handled.
Common Questions
Common questions about ar recovery services & old-ar cleanup.
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Get a Free Billing AuditHow is A/R recovery different from ongoing A/R follow-up?
They are two different jobs. Ongoing accounts receivable follow-up is a continuous operation that works this month's claims through the 30/60/90-day aging buckets before they age out -- it is what our accounts receivable follow-up services provide. A/R recovery is a one-time, time-boxed project aimed backward at the balances that operation has already passed by: the 91-120 and 121+ day buckets, legacy claims from a prior system, un-appealed denials, and underpayments. Recovery targets money a practice has effectively given up on; follow-up prevents money from getting there in the first place. Most practices need both, but sequenced -- a recovery project cleans the backlog, and ongoing follow-up keeps it clean.
How do you decide which old claims are still worth pursuing?
The first filter is the timely-filing limit. A balance past its payer's filing window is not recoverable -- under 42 CFR 424.44, Medicare fee-for-service claims for services furnished on or after 1 January 2010 must be filed no later than one calendar year after the date of service, and the regulation's only exceptions are contractor error or misrepresentation, retroactive Medicare entitlement, and a State Medicaid agency or Medicare Advantage or PACE organization recovering its payment six months or more after the service; each of those extends filing only through the last day of the sixth calendar month after the triggering event. Commercial payers set their own limits, which are generally shorter. So we screen the entire backlog against filing deadlines before anything else and rank by what is closest to expiring. Within the still-fileable set, we weigh dollar value, denial reason, and payer behaviour -- and we exclude, in writing, the balances that are not ours to work: patient responsibility already with a collection agency, accounts in active appeal elsewhere, credit balances, and contractual adjustments miscoded as receivables. MGMA makes the point plainly in its own A/R guidance that the longer a medical bill goes unpaid the harder it is to collect (MGMA Stat, 11 November 2021), which is why triage -- not working the list top to bottom -- is what makes a recovery project pay for itself.
Can you recover underpayments, not just denials?
Yes, and it is often the most overlooked money in old A/R. An underpayment is a payment that falls short of the contracted amount with no denial attached -- nothing bounces, so nothing flags it, and the variance sits in the paid column looking resolved. The method we use comes from an article HFMA publishes on payer contract management, which states that underpayments should be tracked because payers are contractually bound to pay accurately, that contractual variances often appear in accounts not resolved through normal collection efforts, and that a dedicated contract-compliance individual or team with training in contract interpretation should own them with a defined escalation path to senior management. Two honest caveats: that article is bylined by an executive at a contract-management software vendor and written for hospital finance staff, so treat it as a workflow HFMA published rather than as HFMA research, and it prescribes no target number. Recovering variances requires calculating the expected payment at the account level from your payer contracts and fee schedules and comparing it to what was actually paid. Whether we can load your specific contracts, and whether variance recovery runs as a standalone project or inside a broader cleanup, is confirmed during scoping.
What happens if a recoupment or take-back comes up during the cleanup?
Re-examining old claims can surface Medicare overpayments, and CMS attributes those to incorrect coding, insufficient documentation, medical-necessity errors, and processing and administrative errors. When a provider gets an overpayment of $25 or more, the MAC starts recovery with a demand letter, and the timeline is fixed: a rebuttal is due by Day 15 and does not stop recoupment; Day 30 is the last day to pay in full before interest accrues and the day by which a redetermination must be filed to prevent recoupment starting on Day 41; standard recoupment begins on Day 41 (CMS's table starts standard Part A recoupment earlier, on Day 16, for overpayments not subject to the recoupment limitation or in an excluded category); an intent-to-refer letter goes out on days 61-90; and the MAC refers the debt to the U.S. Treasury on days 126-150. The defence is to appeal, not just rebut -- under Section 1893(f)(2)(A), when a MAC receives a valid first- or second-level appeal it generally cannot recoup until there is an appeal decision, whereas a rebuttal changes nothing. Medicare Parts A and B provide five appeal levels: redetermination by the MAC, reconsideration by a qualified independent contractor, a hearing by an administrative law judge or review by an attorney adjudicator at the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, review by the Medicare Appeals Council, and judicial review in U.S. District Court. All of that is CMS's own published timetable (Medicare Overpayments, MLN006379, read 2 October 2026). How far up that ladder we carry an appeal is agreed at scoping, and where a case turns on coverage policy or on what your documentation actually supports, the answer depends on the applicable rule and on professional advice rather than on anything we can promise in advance.
We're switching billing systems -- will our old A/R just disappear?
That is exactly where legacy A/R is lost. In a conversion, current claims move to the new platform and the open balances on the old one keep aging while everyone learns the new system -- and by the time anyone looks back, months of filing windows have closed. A recovery project treats the old system's A/R as its own workstream: we extract the open balances, reconcile them against what migrated, and work the orphaned claims before their deadlines pass. Which prior PM or EHR systems we can extract from, and how that data is imported, is confirmed during scoping. This is also why practices clean up A/R before a sale, merger, or system go-live rather than after.
What do we get at the end of the project, and how is it scoped?
A recovery engagement is bounded, so it ends with a defined handoff rather than a headline percentage. You get a roll-forward built from your own aging file: the gross balance at intake, the balances the eligibility screen excluded and the reason for each, the eligible balance that actually entered the work queue, the cash recovered and posted against it, and what remains open at handoff. Alongside it: a cleaned aging report reflecting only genuinely collectible balances, a documented uncollectible list for clean write-off, and any self-identified overpayment reported and returned within 60 days of identification under Section 1128J(d), subject to the six-year lookback (CMS, Medicare Overpayments, MLN006379, read 2 October 2026). Scope, fee basis, minimum claim age and minimum A/R volume are set at the start rather than left open-ended. On the target state: the AAFP publishes days in A/R below 50 at minimum with 30 to 40 preferable, as practice-management guidance carrying no population, sample or data year -- and we found no free primary source that publishes a target for the share of A/R over 90 days, for net collection rate as distinct from the AAFP's adjusted collection rate, or for write-offs as a share of expected collections. We would rather report your numbers than relay someone else's. We publish recovery results only from verified project data, so we will not quote you a recovery percentage until we have measured yours.
What share of aged accounts receivable is realistically recoverable by aging bucket?
There is no single fixed recovery rate per aging bucket for medical claims, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. For insurance A/R the real gate is the timely-filing window: a clean claim still inside it can recover in full, while a balance past its filing deadline recovers nothing. The closest published evidence for how recoverability decays with age comes from outside healthcare. Commercial Collection Agencies of America, an association of certified commercial collection agencies, publishes an undated survey of its members -- who it says handle roughly 60% of claims placed with professional commercial collection agencies in the United States -- finding that the probability of collecting a delinquent account drops to 68.9% at three months, 51.3% after six months and 21.4% after one year. That is commercial trade debt, not medical claims, and it measures third-party collection rather than payer reimbursement, so read it as the shape of the curve and nothing more. It is still why a recovery project triages by filing deadline rather than working oldest-first.
Is accounts-receivable recovery a legitimate service, and how does it differ from a collection agency?
Yes -- accounts-receivable recovery is a legitimate revenue-cycle service, and it is not debt collection. It works balances a practice is owed by insurance payers: following up on unpaid claims, appealing denials, and recovering contractual underpayments -- the provider pursuing its own reimbursement as the original creditor. A collection agency is different: a third party pursuing a consumer's delinquent balance, usually the patient portion left after insurance, and is regulated by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The CFPB notes the FDCPA covers debts primarily for personal, family, or household purposes and generally does not cover the original creditor, only third-party collectors. A/R recovery works payer claims, not patient debt, and does not report anyone to a credit bureau.
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Find the Cash in Your Old A/R
Send us your aging report. We will run the eligibility screen against it, show you which aged balances, underpayments and denials are still recoverable and which are excluded and why, quote the fee basis in writing, and scope a one-time recovery project -- separate from your ongoing follow-up -- to go get the rest.
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