Denial management is the closed-loop discipline of preventing, identifying, analyzing, correcting, appealing, and resolving denied or underpaid healthcare claims. In 2023, HealthCare.gov insurers reported an average denial rate of 20% for in-network claims, while out-of-network claims had
A 15% initial denial rate for commercial inpatient and outpatient claims is already enough to make denial management a finance problem, not a billing cleanup exercise. An analysis of more than 1,800 hospitals and 200,000 physicians found
Most physician practices are told to fix revenue cycle management by attacking denials. That advice is incomplete. Denials are visible, easy to count, and naturally create work queues, while silent underpayment, payer downcoding, bundling edits, and unreconciled
