Stopping the Revenue Leaks Write Offs, Denials and Missed Appointment: Part 1 – Write-Offs

You built your clinic to care for patients, not to wrestle with billing errors or watch revenue slip away. Yet the reality is that even well-run practices quietly lose hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to denials, excessive write-offs, and missed appointments.

The numbers don’t lie. In Tennessee, Medicare data shows small clinics with write-off rates 6–7% above benchmark. On a $3M revenue base, that gap alone means $150,000–$200,000 lost annually. And Medicare is only part of the story — commercial payers and Medicaid often add even more.

Are your reports helping you understand your current state and what you can do to improve? If not contact TriStar BI to see how we can turn data into actionable intelligence

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

We know how frustrating it feels to work harder every year only to see margins shrinking. The good news: these losses are preventable.

At TriStar Business Intelligence, we’ve worked with 35 hospitals, health systems, and independent clinics. We bring enterprise-level discipline to small practices — without enterprise-level costs — and we build solutions you’ll actually use. No cookie-cutter dashboards. We meet you where you are.

A Clear Plan

1. Assess your data against peer benchmarks

2. Identify where revenue leaks (denials, write-offs, no-shows)

3. Act with right-sized tools (simple KPI dashboard or workflow redesign)

4. Sustain with staff training and KPI reviews

Real Ways We Stop the Leaks (not theory)

• CO-16 (missing/invalid info) prevention.

• CO-11 (dx/procedure mismatch) prevention: coder-to-provider query workflow

• Medical necessity alignment

• Clean-claim discipline: Clean Claim Rate (target ≥95%), First-Pass Resolution (≥90%), Denial Rate (≤10%) 

• Write-off control

The Stakes

If nothing changes

• Six figures in revenue continue to slip away each year

• Staff keeps firefighting denials and resubmits

• You work harder for thinner margins

If your write off rate is above benchmark its like only getting paid for 6 of the 10 patients you seeeach day

If you act

• Up to+$150K–$240K/yr by aligning write-offs to benchmark (Medicare alone)

• ROI that often covers itself within months

• A calmer, more predictable business that lets you focus on patients

The Transformation

You don’t need a big-system BI team to get big-system results. With TriStar BI you get:

• Enterprise-grade insight scaled to a small clinic

• Custom fit (from a two-page KPI view to full change management)

• Confidence your revenue is protected by methods payers and auditors recognize

Stop the leaks. Start thriving.

If you’d like, we can start with an anonymized pilot dashboard built from your Medicare claims: a low-lift way to see exactly where money is slipping—and what’s realistic to recover.

Contact us today to schedule your free no risk consult and as a bonus we will build you a free dashboard to review your current state.

Schedule your free consult