The trend of medical billing service is not very new but has been enjoying quite a fame lately owing to its long-term benefits on the healthcare practice. If you are one of those healthcare practices that still do the billing themselves instead of outsourcing medical billing services, you may reconsider your decision.
Doing the billing yourself indeed gives you more control over the finances, but it may have a hindrance effect on the numbers. Know that it involves a lot of work, and hiring an expert for the job can be a better decision for yourself and your practice.
Here is why choosing a medical billing service can be the best idea for your healthcare practice.
Total Transparency:
When you get a clear picture of your revenues, you can take corrective measures and make your practice more profitable. This is exactly what a medical billing service does for you. In fact, they provide you with a detailed medical billing report with all the nitty-gritty details of your accounts.
Usually, a medical billing report has the following attributes:
- Total number of claims that were submitted
- Percentage of denials and percentage
- Percentage of clean claims
- Account receivables
- Monthly patient reimbursements
- Monthly payer reimbursements
- A detail-oriented picture of your practice’s financial health
This helps the practitioners know the type of denials their practice has and how to counter them. In addition, it helps the billers ensure that all the claims will be processed timely. Likewise, the practice owners will be assured that the claims are being processed and paid timely.
Notably, it is impossible to achieve this level of transparency in a practice you are handling the billing yourself. Hence, hiring an expert service can be beneficial for you.
Cost-Effective Solution:
It is a common misconception that medical billing companies charge an arm and a leg to provide medical billing services to your practice. It is obvious when you hire service on a permanent on-going basis, you need to pay for your staff’s health benefits and training costs in addition to the payroll. However, the actual scenario is quite the opposite for the medical billing companies, as they charge you based on insurance reimbursements.
In addition, they provide you with an impeccable service that ensures less rework due to efficient coding compliance and lesser rejections.
What else? There is another misconception that medical billing services are suitable for small and medium-sized practices only, which is also a total sham. Know that these companies are at the greater benefit as they get to off-load some administrative burden without hiring full-time employees.
Moreover, patient turnover will likely increase when the practice owner focuses more on the patients than the billing services.
More Focused Practice:
The stress of managing bills can be a little overwhelming and affect your practice’s efficiency. According to a survey, medical staff including nurses and medical assistants spend around 21 hours a week per physician performing administrative duties.
Hence, outsourcing your medical billing service can take the burden off your shoulders, and you can delegate all that time to patient care as a healthcare practitioner or staff. Moreover, they also show you the way around billing as per specialty, proper documentation, and coding guidelines, which is the core of the medical billing service.
All this reduces the test duplication and errors while keeping you organized, and thus makes it a win-win.
Taking Over Credentialing Service:
Are you thinking of expanding your work family by taking up new staff on-board? Or are you a new practitioner? You need to go through enrollment and credentialing processes to connect them with the insurance carriers. Keep in mind that this process is not at all easy and requires time and effort.
That’s where a medical billing service company comes in and takes care of the entire process for you. The experts on board know the payer-wise credentialing like the back of their hand, along with contracting procedures that speed up the enrollment and credentialing process.
After the completion of the enrollment, it’s time to negotiate with the payers to get the best possible rates.
If you are a small practice, you might find it hard and overwhelming to negotiate with insurance carriers that are much bigger in scale than you. But don’t worry; your medical billing service company will take care of it for you as they are trained for it and will get you the best rates to suit your budget.
Expert Coding And Billing:
Medical billing services are hailed as experts for all the right reasons. They are well-trained to eliminate and counter all the reasons that can lead to claim denials and hence take care of the billing and payments for you. Below are some salient features of an expert medical billing service:
- Auditing: The experts at your medical billing company review the claim status periodically and determine the ratio of rejected vs. accepted bills. As they do so, they keep you updated on everything that follows. Next up, the rejected bills are further analyzed to investigate the root cause and carry out rectification. After fixing, the claim is again submitted.
- Following Up: Insurance carriers are known for delaying payments due to some minor objection in the claim. They do so to maximize profits. Due to this, the practitioners have to resubmit the bills after eliminating the objections. As a practitioner, you must understand how difficult that can be for you. A medical billing service will resolve the objection and follow up on the claim status, increasing your practice’s success ratio and the number of reimbursements.
- Accurate Billing: An error as minor as demographic information can lead to payment rejection which can be quite a nuisance. However, a medical billing service’s medical coding and billing experts are less likely to make such mistakes. Also, they check the patient’s insurance status and always use the latest tools to always enter the right codes. Any mistake made in the coding procedure can prove a valid reason for the payment denial.
Key Takeaway:
Medical billing service comes with multiple benefits that are sustainable and have a direct effect on revenues. No matter what size your practice is, it will be a win-win situation for you and take your practice to new heights.