What actually matters
- Start with your initial denial rate — healthy is under 5–10%, but many independent practices run 11–15% by payer and don't track it
- Multiply denied claims by your average reimbursement to get gross dollars at risk each month
- The real loss is the write-off slice: an estimated 65% of denied claims are never reworked, and about two-thirds of denials are recoverable
- Add the invisible layer — underpayments and downcoding that post as paid claims your A/R report treats as closed
- A five-point gap in net collection rate on $1M collected is $50,000 a year straight off the bottom line
Move the sliders to your practice. This is a benchmark — your real number comes from your own remittances.
Common questions
What percentage of revenue do practices lose to denials?
Industry estimates put uncollected denials and underpayments at roughly 5–10% of net revenue for practices that don't work them systematically. Initial denial rates now commonly run 11–15% by payer, and a large share of denied claims are written off without an appeal.
How do I calculate my practice's denial write-off?
Take your denied-claim dollars for a period, subtract what you recovered, and the remainder is your write-off. Most owners are surprised because denials that post and then get abandoned never surface on a standard A/R report.
Are written-off claims worth recovering?
Usually yes — about two-thirds of denials are recoverable and roughly 90% are preventable, so the write-off pile is mostly money you already earned. It sits because working each claim by hand can cost more than the claim returns.
Where Volari fits: Volari reads your actual remittances and returns a claim-by-claim recoverable number — not a benchmark estimate — then works the winnable denials and underpayments for 25% of what it recovers.
Stop estimating. See your real number.
Upload your remittances and Volari returns a claim-by-claim recoverable figure from your own data — not a benchmark. No risk, paid only on what we recover.