Which statement about claims scrubbing is accurate?

• A. It involves pre-submission review of claims to correct errors and avoid rejections or denials.
• B. It is used to speed up post-payment processing.
• C. It is a method for encrypting patient data.
• D. It replaces the remittance advice.

Answer: (A)

Claims scrubbing is a pre-submission quality check of healthcare claims. Its main purpose is to catch and fix errors before a claim is sent to the payer, reducing the likelihood of rejections or denials and the need for time-consuming resubmissions. This involves validating that all required fields are complete and accurate, verifying coding correctness (like ICD-10-CM/PCS, CPT/HCPCS), ensuring modifiers and dates of service align with payer rules, and confirming patient demographics and provider identifiers are correct. By catching these issues early, the claim has a higher chance of passing adjudication on the first submission, which helps speed up the overall revenue cycle indirectly.

The other options don’t fit as well. Post-payment processing is about what happens after a claim has been paid or denied, which is not the purpose of scrubbing. Encrypting patient data is a security measure, not a claims quality check. Remittance advice is the payer’s payment explanation sent after adjudication; claims scrubbing does not replace this document.