AR Recovery Services: How a Practice Gets Its Old Claims Moving Again

Author : Zayn Will | Published On : 11 Nov 2026

The practice in this story is made up to show a common pattern. It is not a real client and the story contains no real figures.

A small family practice has a good schedule and steady visits. The doctor assumes the money is following. Then the owner opens the aging report for the first time in months and sees the problem: a large share of unpaid claims is more than 90 days old, and nobody knows who is responsible for chasing them.

This is where AR recovery services come in. The rest of this guide follows the same practice through the steps that usually turn a growing pile of old balances into a routine that runs every week.

How the pile builds up

Nothing dramatic happened. The practice sent its claims on time. But follow up was always the task that came last:

A claim was sent and never confirmed as received.
A denial arrived, was set aside “for later” and never revisited.
A payer asked for a record, and the request sat in an inbox.
A patient balance was billed once and never followed up.

Each of these is small. Together, they become aged accounts receivable: money the practice has earned but has not collected. And the older a claim gets, the harder it is to collect, because appeal and filing deadlines get closer and details are forgotten.

Step 1: Read the aging report

The first step is to look at what is owed, grouped by age. Most aging reports use buckets such as 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60 days, 61 to 90 days and over 90 days. The goal is not to be alarmed by the oldest bucket. It is to see which payers and which kinds of claims are in each one.

The practice in our story also looks at days in AR, a measure of how long, on average, it takes to collect after the service. A common way to calculate it is total accounts receivable divided by average daily charges. The exact number matters less than the direction over time. If days in AR keeps growing, claims are being collected more slowly.

Step 2: Sort the pile by reason

Not all old claims are the same, and they need different treatment:

No response from the payer. Check status and resend if needed.
Denied, correctable. Fix the error and send a corrected claim.
Denied, disputed. Appeal with documentation. Our guide to billing collection strategies covers how follow up and appeals fit together.
Waiting on the patient. Send statements, offer a payment option and follow up on a schedule.
Missing information. Get what the payer asked for and send it back before the deadline.

Step 3: Check the deadlines first

Every payer has deadlines for corrected claims and appeals. So the practice sorts by deadline before it sorts by amount. A smaller claim with a deadline next week comes before a large claim with months left.

Step 4: Give every claim an owner

A claim without an owner does not get worked. The practice assigns each category to a named person, with a target number of touches per week, and a place to record each contact: the date, the person spoken to and what was promised.

Step 5: Fix the cause, not just the claim

While working the old claims, the team writes down why each one went unpaid. After a few weeks, the pattern is clear. Maybe one payer needs a particular attachment. Maybe the same coding error keeps coming back. Those findings go back to the front desk and the coders so that new claims do not age the same way.

What AR recovery in medical billing looks like when it is a routine

Collections stop being a rescue project. The practice reviews the aging report every week, works the oldest and most urgent claims first and reviews the reasons every month. The pile no longer builds up, because follow up has an owner and a schedule.

When to bring in outside help

Some practices cannot spare the time. If the oldest bucket keeps growing or there is no one to own follow up, medical AR recovery services can take over the work: reading the aging report, contacting payers, correcting and resubmitting claims, writing appeals and reporting back on what was collected and why the rest was not.

When you compare providers, ask:

How do they decide which claims to work first?
How do they report results, and can you see them by payer and by reason?
How do they handle patient balances?
Will they sign a business associate agreement?
What do they do about claims that cannot be collected?

Be careful of anyone who promises a fixed recovery percentage before looking at your claims. Results depend on how old the balances are, how well the services are documented and what each payer allows.

Where to start this week

Run an aging report today.
Pick the three payers with the most old balances.
Look at ten claims from each and write down why they are unpaid.
Give each reason an owner and a date.

If you would like a second pair of eyes on the numbers, a free claims audit from Practice Perfect Solutions and Services will show where your claims are getting stuck and what it is costing you