Write-Off
A write-off is any amount you remove from a claim's balance and stop pursuing — legitimate for true contractual adjustments, but a silent revenue leak when it's applied to money you were actually owed.
A write-off is the accounting action of clearing a balance you've decided not to collect. Some write-offs are correct and unavoidable: the contractual adjustment to the allowed amount, a small-balance write-off below your collection threshold, or a genuinely non-covered service. Others are avoidable and expensive — a denial written off because no one had time to appeal it, an underpayment written off as a normal contractual adjustment, or a timely-filing denial written off without checking whether proof of submission exists. The distinction that matters is 'contractual' versus 'adjustment' write-offs: contractual write-offs reflect what you agreed to accept, while adjustment (or 'administrative') write-offs are dollars you were owed but gave up on. Every avoidable write-off is pure lost revenue on care you already delivered — the cost is 100% margin. Practices rarely track write-off reasons closely enough to see the leak, so denied and underpaid dollars disappear into the same bucket as legitimate contractual adjustments. Segmenting write-offs by reason code is the way to see how much of what you're writing off was actually recoverable, and it's usually a larger number than anyone expects.
Volari works the pile that would otherwise be written off — denials and underpayments abandoned for lack of hours — so recoverable dollars get pursued instead of cleared off the books.
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