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31% average lift in collectionsfor practices that switch to MBS
MBS Medical Billing Services
Interventional Pain Management·Published September 2026

Paid faster, paid better: A/R days down 52%, per-visit collections up 12%

A four-location interventional pain management group in Georgia was losing routine injection claims to modifier errors and high-dollar procedures to authorization gaps. MBS moved every fix ahead of claim submission and cut A/R days from 60+ to 29.

A/R days
-52%

60+ days to 29 days

Collections per visit
+12%

$77 to $86, 2023 to 2025

Time to full deployment
60 days
Revenue collected
$0.95M → $6.09M

2022 to 2025

Talk about your numbers

Specialty

Interventional Pain Management

Practice size

~71,000 appointments a year

Locations

4 locations across Georgia

Payer mix

50% commercial, 40% Medicare, 10% Medicaid / workers' comp / PIP

Client tenure with MBS

3+ years

Engagement type

Full-suite revenue cycle management

Engagement objective

What the client needed

  • Stand up specialty-specific pre-authorization.
  • Make clinical documentation defensible on medical necessity.
  • Replace reactive A/R chasing with prioritized follow-up.

Starting position

The challenges

  • High denial volume on routine procedures — epidural steroid injections, nerve blocks, facet injections — driven by missing or incorrect modifiers (25, 50, 59) and frequency-limit issues.
  • Denials on high-dollar procedures such as radiofrequency ablation, SI joint fusion, neurostimulator implants, and kyphoplasty, driven by missing or non-compliant prior authorizations.
  • Front-desk and billing teams relying on generalized billing workflows rather than pain-management-specific criteria.
  • Clearinghouse scrubbing rules not configured to catch specialty-specific coding and medical-necessity errors before submission.
  • Reactive, unprioritized A/R follow-up, with over 35% of the outstanding balance aged past 90 days before the engagement.

Solutions

What MBS put in place

1

Authorization and documentation before submission

  • A dedicated pre-auth team cross-references payer guidelines 72+ hours before every procedure.
  • Clearinghouse rules block RFA and spinal cord stimulator claims until the chart documents failed conservative treatment.
  • Custom EMR templates prompt clinicians to capture conservative care, pain scores, and anatomical levels.
2

Prioritized A/R follow-up

  • The A/R team segments claims by age, payer, and dollar value, and works high-dollar claims at 14–21 days.
  • Automated tracking flags claims stuck in clearinghouse hold or payer edit status.
3

Front-desk collections

  • Pre-procedure eligibility checks let the front desk collect copays and deductibles on the day of service.
  • New service lines billed correctly from day one: CMAT, cognitive testing, nerve conduction studies, and DME.

Impact

What changed

  • A/R days fell 52%, from 60+ days to 29 days.
  • Fewer denials, faster resolution: tighter modifier use reduced denials on high-volume injection work, while prior-authorization and conservative-care documentation did the same for RFA, SI joint fusion, neurostimulator implants, and kyphoplasty.
  • Per-visit collections rose from $77 to $86 as collections tightened on existing procedures and new service lines were brought onto billing.
  • Full leadership visibility: claims are automatically prioritized by age, payer, and dollar value, giving real-time visibility into A/R aging and claim status.

Recovery

Annual revenue collections

2022 to 2025

2022 to 2025
YearRevenue collected
2022$0.95M
2023$2.37M
2024$4.15M
2025$6.09M

Time to first results

Full deployment took 60 days, with the first measurable results inside the same window.

Why it worked

The operating model behind the result

  • Prevention, not recovery: every fix sat before claim submission, not after denial.
  • One rulebook: pre-auth, EMR templates, and scrubber rules enforced the same medical-necessity criteria.
  • Fast to stand up: full deployment in 60 days.
  • A/R worked by value and age instead of in received order.

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