Denial Rate Calculator

Enter monthly claims, denials, average claim value and a recovery rate to see the denial rate and what it costs — monthly and annually.

Denials as money, not percentages

A denial rate on its own is easy to shrug at; the same rate expressed as monthly dollars is not. Enter claims submitted, claims denied, the average claim value and a realistic recovery rate, and this calculator returns the rate alongside the numbers that drive action: revenue denied per month, the recoverable share, and the annual exposure.

How to use it

  1. Enter monthly claim volume and denials.
  2. Enter the average claim value from your reports.
  3. Set a recovery rate — well-worked denial queues recover 55–70%.

The formulas

rate = denied ÷ submitted · exposure = denied × average value · recoverable = exposure × recovery%

A worked example

2,000 claims a month with 180 denials is a 9% denial rate — against an industry-typical 5–10% and a best-practice target under 5%. At $185 a claim that’s $33,300 denied every month ($399,600 a year); at a 60% recovery rate, roughly $19,980 a month is winnable — and the remaining ~$13,000 is the permanent monthly cost of the denial rate itself, which is the number that funds prevention work.

Estimates only — payer contracts, plan documents and the EOB are always the source of truth, and nothing here is billing, legal or medical advice. The calculator runs entirely in your browser: no patient data is entered, transmitted or stored.

Common questions

What denial rate is normal?
Industry surveys put typical initial-denial rates around 5–10%, with best performers under 5%. The trend and the top denial reasons matter more than the single figure.
What share of denials is recoverable?
Most initial denials are administrative — eligibility, coding, authorization — and appealable; worked promptly, 55–70% recovery is realistic. Unworked denials recover close to zero.
Prevention or appeals — where does the money go further?
Prevention — an appealed dollar costs staff time and delay; a prevented denial costs neither. Use the recoverable figure to fund root-cause fixes on the top three denial reasons.