Billing Problems We Solve
Fixing Accounts Receivable Over 90 Days
AR past 90 days is inventory rotting on the shelf — some recoverable with urgency, some already dead, and all of it evidence that follow-up lost the race.
Receivables age for one fundamental reason: claims stopped moving and nobody moved them. Past 90 days, recovery probability drops steeply — appeal windows close, timely-filing limits pass, payer records fossilize — which makes the over-90 bucket both an urgent recovery project and a diagnostic of the follow-up engine that let claims slide there.
Symptoms
- Over-90 AR exceeding 20% of total receivables and growing
- Aged claims with no follow-up notes explaining their age
- Write-offs happening in periodic purges rather than documented decisions
- The same balance sheet number carried quarter after quarter, quietly less real each time
Possible Causes
- Follow-up capacity below claim volume, so aging outruns touching
- Denials and pends unworked until they became aged AR
- Secondary claims, patient balances, and small-balance claims falling through workflow cracks
- Inherited backlogs from staff departures, vendor failures, or system conversions
Operational Impact
- Recovery value decays with age — aged claims collect at steep discounts to fresh ones
- The balance sheet overstates reality, distorting every decision made on it
Where Outsourced Support Helps
Aged-AR cleanup is a capacity problem by definition — the team that could not keep up cannot also work the backlog — which is why it fits project-based outside help: triage-first methodology, deadline-driven production, documented closure of the dead tail, and weekly recovery reporting against the baseline. Our old AR recovery service runs precisely this play, priced for backlog economics.
Honesty note: No billing partner can guarantee recovery amounts or revenue improvements — results depend on your claims, payers, documentation, and deadlines. What we guarantee is disciplined process and honest measurement.
Practical Steps to Fix It
Triage the bucket honestly
Classify every aged claim: workable (live deadlines, recoverable causes), doubtful, or dead — because effort spent on dead claims is stolen from savable ones.
Work deadlines first
Claims approaching appeal or filing limits get priority regardless of size; expired rights are permanent.
Close the dead with documentation
Unrecoverable balances get written off with recorded reasons — clean books beat comfortable fictions, and the reasons feed prevention.
Fix the engine that aged them
Whatever let claims slide — capacity, cadence, ownership gaps — gets rebuilt, or the bucket refills behind the cleanup.
Frequently Asked Questions
What share of over-90 AR is typically recoverable?
Honest answer: it varies enormously with composition — denial mix, payer behavior, deadline status, documentation quality — which is why triage precedes promises. Anyone quoting a recovery percentage before examining the inventory is guessing; triage gives a claim-level answer within weeks.
Should we just write the old stuff off and move on?
Not blindly in either direction: mass write-offs abandon genuinely workable claims with live deadlines, while carrying dead AR indefinitely corrupts your numbers. The disciplined path is triage, recover the workable, and close the dead with documentation — usually some of both, decided by evidence.
Stop managing this problem. Fix it.
Request a free billing assessment and get a clear, no-obligation review of your claims process, denial patterns, and accounts receivable.