When Imaging Moves Fast, but Revenue Moves Slow
Radiology is one of the highest-throughput service lines in healthcare but the revenue cycle often lags days, even weeks, behind. Orders get lost in translation, CPTs get dropped during transmission, and coders aren’t always aligned to the modality they’re coding.
You don’t need another platform. You need billing workflows that understand radiology logic. Because every missed CPT, every rejected claim, and every billing delay isn’t just noise it’s lost income.
What’s Really Breaking in Radiology RCM?
Across outpatient imaging centers and diagnostic departments, we’ve consistently seen:
- CPT mismatches for dual-modality and contrast/non-contrast studies
- Orders disconnected from clinical documentation or improperly linked
- Modifiers not applied or stripped out during RIS/PACS handoff
- No real-time visibility into where the claim sits between scan and billing
Visual Snapshot – Revenue Leakage in Radiology
- Ordered Procedures: 100%
- Captured CPTs: 86%
- Clean Documentation Matched: 73%
- Submitted Claims (First-Time Clean): 62%
- Result: 38% of revenue was either delayed, denied, or undercoded
How We Closed the Gap at Scionis
Our approach to radiology billing isn’t just technical it’s operational:
- Modality-specific coders paired to each site and study type
- Live CPT capture audits from PACS feed
- Pre-bill CPT and modifier review logic tied to payer policy
- Workflow integration with RIS to validate orders before billing
- Shared dashboards showing time from scan to billing by location and case
Quantifiable Results
One regional imaging group saw the following in just 60 days:
- $310,000 recovered in missed CPT value
- 55% improvement in order-to-bill turnaround
- 36% drop in documentation-related denials
- Full compliance with HIPAA and GDPR across documentation trails
- Weekly reports shared with finance and operations
Before vs After Snapshot
Closing Insight
Every scan should turn into revenue. But in radiology, that only happens when the coding logic, the documentation, and the billing ops move as fast as the imaging. At Scionis, we bring operational clarity to the billing side of radiology because clinical efficiency means nothing if the revenue gets stuck in the backend.
