Medical accounts receivable recovery
Medical accounts receivable recovery is the work of collecting insurance claims that have aged past a practice's normal payment cycle: 90+ day claims, denials, underpayments, and claims nobody has followed up on. MARR Partners does that work for specialty practices on a contingency fee, alongside the existing billing team, and is paid only on revenue actually recovered.
What medical A/R recovery includes
90+ day claims
Insurance claims that have aged past 90 days without payment or a final determination. Verified with the payer, classified, and worked by deadline.
Denied claims
Prior authorization, medical necessity, coding and modifier, eligibility, timely filing, and underpayment denials, each with its own recovery path.
Underpaid claims
Allowed amounts below the contracted rate, wrong fee schedules, and multiple-procedure reductions taken in error. Compared line by line and disputed.
Unworked claims
Claims with no follow-up activity since submission. Usually the largest recoverable bucket after staff turnover or a vendor change.
Legacy A/R
Receivables left in an old practice-management system or abandoned by a prior billing company.
Why aged medical A/R is recoverable
An unpaid claim past 90 days is not a lost claim. Medicare allows claims to be filed within one calendar year of the date of service, and Medicare's first-level appeal (redetermination) can be requested within 120 days of the initial determination, per CMS. Commercial contracts commonly allow 90 to 180 days for filing and 60 to 180 days for appeals. Inside those windows, most aged claims can be corrected, appealed, or disputed.
Denials in particular are worth working. A 2022 HHS Office of Inspector General review found that 13% of Medicare Advantage prior-authorization denials and 18% of payment denials in its sample met Medicare coverage and billing rules, meaning the services should have been approved or paid (OIG, OEI-09-18-00260).
| Claim age | Typical status | Recovery action |
|---|---|---|
| 0–30 days | In process | Routine monitoring |
| 31–60 days | Pending or first denial | Status check, correct and resubmit |
| 61–90 days | Denied or stalled | Escalate, appeal, request records |
| 91–120 days | Unworked or under appeal | Recovery priority; deadlines checked first |
| 120+ days | Filing and appeal windows closing | Immediate recoverability review |
How the recovery process works
- PracticePractice provides its aging report through a secure link under a BAA.
- MARRMARR analyzes every claim by age, payer, balance, denial reason, and filing deadline.
- MARRClaims are prioritized by recoverability and deadline; unrecoverable balances are documented for write-off.
- MARRThe recovery team works the payer: corrections, resubmissions, documentation, appeals, and underpayment disputes.
- PayerThe payer remits to the practice through its normal channels. Money never passes through MARR.
- MARRMARR invoices its contingency fee, calculated only on remittances actually received, with a monthly report.
Fee Contingency only, 12–18% by claim age
Invoiced monthly on remittances actually received. No setup fee, no minimum, no software license, no long-term contract, and no fee on claims we close as unrecoverable.
Who it is for
Independent specialty practices with 5–30+ providers and roughly $250,000 or more in 90+ day insurance A/R: orthopedics, pain management, gastroenterology, urology, ENT, dermatology, surgery groups, cardiology, and physical medicine. Multi-specialty groups and MSOs with several of these under one roof. Dental groups and oral surgery practices are covered on the dental A/R recovery page.
The engagement starts with a free audit: send the aging report under a BAA and receive a Recovery opportunity report within 5 business days.
Sources
- CMS, Medicare timely filing requirements (claims must be filed within one calendar year of the date of service)
- CMS, Original Medicare (fee-for-service) appeals: five levels and deadlines
- HHS Office of Inspector General, OEI-09-18-00260: Some Medicare Advantage denials of prior authorization and payment met Medicare coverage rules (2022)
- MGMA DataDive, practice operations and A/R benchmarks
Figures attributed to a source are that source's; commonly used benchmarks are labeled as such. Verify deadlines against your own payer contracts.