Setting Up A Mailroom

When you submit medical insurance claims to insurance carriers, even if you are sending them electronically, you will still have lots of claims to mail. Many claims are still not accepted electronically and many companies don't have the capability of accepting secondary claims electronically.

We quickly found that we had to work out a system for getting these claims in the mail efficiently. We developed a great system for sorting, stuffing and mailing these claims.

We start with two corrugated boxes we found at an office supply store divided into 30 sections each. They are also available in wood and steel and are called literature organizers. I labeled about ten of them with the most common insurance companies we deal with. I then started with A and went to Z using either one or two letters per compartment. As insurance claims are printed and ready to mail, they are sorted into the correct compartment for that particular insurance company. Excellus has it's own slot for all the insurance claims we submit to the local Excellus. We get a few claims that must be sent to Excellus in Florida or Mississippi, etc. Those out of state claims are placed in the E slot.

The claims are now presorted. When we are ready to mail them, we take the A's first and look through them to make sure no Aetnas or American Progressive (which have slots of their own) were placed in this bin in error. The A's are sorted, folded, and placed in window envelopes with our return address imprinted. We can place up to 14 forms in a business size envelope without going over the weight restriction for this size. I fold one form for the front window and then fold the others together behind the front one. If you fold them all together, it pushes the address lower in the window and sometimes doesn't fit the window properly. These must be folded as tight as possible as there is a thickness allowance for this size envelope.

When we have over 14 claims to one address, they are not folded and go into a large window envelope made for HCFA's. The postage rate for this size envelope is higher than for a small envelope so we use the small ones when possible.

When all claims are in their envelopes, we weigh them and add the proper postage. I do not use a postage meter machine as it is an added expense and not necessary. We are a small office that does not have a problem with stamps disappearing so we purchase a variety of stamps. I have a chart that I update with each postage increase to indicate exactly which stamps to apply to each envelope weight.

If you mail a lot of claims the post office has free information they will give you regarding the limitations on the size of the envelopes you can use and a slotted cardboard your smaller envelopes must fit through. It's much better to know all their new rules and avoid getting your mail returned and claims delayed.