Decisions on appeals and write-offs stay with your practice, every time. The specialist works the queue; your practice makes the calls.
myMedCrew is the healthcare arm of CrewBloom, placing remote professionals since 2016.
What Accounts Receivable in Medical Billing Actually Is
Every claim you submit sits in AR until it is paid, adjusted or written off. Two numbers tell you whether that pipeline is healthy: days in AR (how long money takes to arrive on average) and the share of AR sitting over 90 days old. Benchmarks vary by specialty and payer mix, so the trend matters more than any single target: both numbers should be flat or falling.
AR doesn't age because anyone decided to let it. It ages because follow-up is a full-time queue and nobody owns it. Payments get posted, but claims never get closed. Denials arrive and get treated as noise: across HealthCare.gov plans, KFF found insurers denied 19% of in-network claims in 2023, and consumers appealed roughly 1% of those denials. The pattern on the practice side is the same shape: what nobody works, everybody eventually writes off.
Why Denials Pile Up
Most practices don't have a denial problem so much as a denial workflow problem. Without a documented queue sorted by reason and deadline, the same denial reasons recur month after month, and timely filing windows close while claims wait. A share of them start upstream, in how the claim was coded or how eligibility was checked, which is why this seat often sits alongside a medical billing or medical coding seat rather than replacing one. In Experian Health's 2025 State of Claims survey, 41% of providers reported denial rates of 10% or more.
Rework is not free either: the Change Healthcare Denials Index put the average cost of reworking a denied claim at $25.20 for practices, and MGMA's denials guidance cites the same index's finding that 86% of denials are potentially avoidable. The leverage isn't in heroics on individual claims. It is in somebody working the queue, every day, with deadlines visible.
What an AR Specialist Handles
A new seat usually starts by sizing the queue: what is denied, what was never sent, and what is coming up against timely filing. From there the work runs as a standing daily queue, documented in your system.
Who Decides What
Your specialist works denials and aging inside your own queue, at your cadence. When a claim needs a judgment call, they prepare the correction or the packet, document the reason, and bring it to your billing lead, office manager or provider. That boundary is the model.
Not a Collections Agency
One boundary worth stating plainly: this seat works payer-side AR, inside your practice, on your logins. Patient-balance collections is a different and separately regulated business. If you are looking for a collections agency to pursue patient debt, that is not this page and we won't pretend otherwise.
Aging behaves differently by specialty, and the seat is scoped to match: therapy clinics carry visit-cap and authorization denials (PT and rehab), multi-provider groups carry enrollment-driven rejections (provider groups).
What an AR Seat Costs
AR and denial specialists sit in our specialized tier at $14/hr.
Proof
Placements come from a bench that has run billing, AR and follow-up desks since 2016 under CrewBloom.
Getting a Seat Filled
Placements are pre-vetted before they reach your shortlist, and if one doesn't work out we replace them.
HIPAA-Aligned Infrastructure
Specialists work under HIPAA-aligned infrastructure defined by four controls: MFA on every account, encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access, and audit logging. Details on our HIPAA page.
Frequently asked questions
What is accounts receivable in medical billing?+
Accounts receivable is the money a practice has billed but not yet collected, from payers and patients. It is tracked in aging buckets (0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90-plus days), and the two numbers to watch are days in AR and the share of AR over 90 days old.
What is a good days in AR?+
It varies by specialty and payer mix, so a single universal target is less useful than the trend: days in AR and the over-90 share should be flat or falling. If both are climbing, follow-up capacity is usually the constraint, not the payer.
What are the types of claim denials?+
The practical split is hard versus soft: hard denials are final unless appealed, soft denials are correctable and resubmittable. By cause, most fall into administrative errors, eligibility and authorization issues, or documentation and coding disputes. Sorting by type is what turns a denial pile into a workable queue.
What are the steps of denial management?+
Identify the denial reason from the remittance, correct what is fixable, resubmit or assemble the appeal, and log the cause so recurring patterns get prevented instead of repeated. In a staffing model the specialist runs those steps inside your system, and your practice makes every appeal and write-off decision.
Do you handle patient collections?+
No. The seat works payer-side AR and denials inside your practice's systems. Patient-balance collections is a separately regulated business and is not what this role does.
How much does an AR specialist cost?+
myMedCrew places AR and denial specialists at a flat $14/hr, so the cost tracks hours worked.
Does the specialist work in my PM system?+
Yes. Your specialist works inside your existing practice management system, clearinghouse and payer portals under role-based access you control. Nothing migrates.
Want the queue sized before you decide?
Book a call and bring your AR aging report.