Patient Care Delays and Idle Capacity from PA Bottlenecks

$1,000+ per denial from incomplete ED docs • $1,500+ per contract penalty from delays • $10,000-$25,000 per month (bed days lost to delayed admissions; plus opportunity cost of reactive relationship management affecting future negotiations)

AR managers contact payer relationship teams directly; escalation calls; manual claim resubmission after re-work; Excel tracking of denial patterns by payer • Budget analyst compiles manual denial reports and delay statistics for contract renewal meetings; uses Excel pivot tables to show payer-specific denial rates and turnaround times • Budget analyst manually reconciles scheduling logs with PA approval timelines; uses ad-hoc queries to calculate lost margin; adjusts forecasts based on empirical delay patterns