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Revenue Cycle

Cutting days in AR: what actually moves the needle

Most AR-reduction projects focus on collections. The real gains come 60 days earlier, at intake.

Mar 09, 2026 7 min readBy Robert Chen, RCM Lead

If your days-in-AR is over 35, you don't have a collections problem — you have an intake and verification problem. By the time a claim hits the aging report, the cost to resolve it has 5x'd.

Our highest-impact tactic: dedicated insurance verification 5 days before every visit, with eligibility, plan max, and prior-auth flagged in the chart note. This single change typically removes 30–40% of all denials.

Combine that with a dedicated denial-management associate who works denials within 48 hours, and AR days tend to drop from the 40s to the mid-20s within a quarter.

"The systems that worked for one location will fail at three. Centralize early."

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