Physicians and other healthcare professionals are increasingly confronted with reduced reimbursement rates from insurance providers, but face rising operational cost in their offices and clinics. These operational costs arise from staff payroll, IT support, etc.
Due to these factors, the medical billing portion of a practice’s everyday operations is even more important. Keeping the billing process in-house may initialing sound tempting. Healthcare providers can micromanage every claim and feel confidently in the belief that who better to look after your money, but yourself. However, this is not always the wisest choice.
Whether selling a house or optimizing a 401k account, utilizing the skills of an expert in the industry is always helpful. The same logic holds true for medical billing. There are definite advantages to outsourcing the medical billing process to a firm that specializes in this industry. With this in mind, here four reasons why outsourcing your medical billing is likely the best practice for your healthcare facility or medical office.
Reason 1: Better Claim Processing Speed
In order to optimize a medical office’s cash flow, every insurance claim must be paid quickly and accurately. Time is valuable, so healthcare staff do not have the luxury of investigating and following-up on every claim. Healthcare professionals and their support staff are often pulled in numerous directions.
The timely filing of insurance claims is not always the first thing on their to-do-list. But these claims should be submitted promptly and correctly the first time. Otherwise, the expanding demand for the monitoring outstanding or unpaid claims will quickly rob an office of any free time. Being forced to make multiple phone calls to insurance providers will only consume more time and add an additional level of frustration.
Healthcare providers should outsource this function in order to reduce the administrative burden placed on their support staff. Good medical billing companies are consistent, accurate and quick with the submission and processing of any insurance claim.
Reason 2: Only Focusing on High-Value Claims
When a medical office is overwhelmed, corners are cut in order to keep a level of stability. The quality of patient care is the last thing that a provider would want to reduce. Instead, time is saved by reducing the attention given to lower dollar value insurance claims.
Some healthcare practices will focus on larger high dollar value claims, since these are a greater percentage of their cash flow. Yet, this excessive focus on outstanding claims with the highest dollar amount will create long-term complications. The insurance claims worth a lower dollar amount are sometimes forgotten and slip through the cracks. They basically become a write-off, which is never good for an organization’s bottom line.
Ideally, clinics and medical offices should first identify and target the claims that have processing issues. In this way, valuable time is not wasted making phone calls on claims that are processing normally through the system. Randomly allocating resources in order to follow up on all outstanding claims is inefficient. Targeted claim management is always a better approach.
However, most back office support staff in a medical practice do not have enough experience with the nuances of efficiently managing the medical billing process. Outsourcing the medical billing task allows the office staff to focus on other more pressing details, such as delivering expectational patient care.
Reason 3: Cost-Efficient Due to Specialization
As a medical billing company, this is what they do day in and day out. Quality revenue cycle management services are repeatedly in contact with insurance providers. Much like an investment advisor or real estate agent, the many years of successful practice in their respected industries has provided these individuals with a specialized set of skills and a deep base of knowledge.
Over the years, experience has made these people experts in their chosen field. A skilled medical billing company is a better value over the long-run. For medical billing services, this means they already possess the IT infrastructure and software to efficiently process insurance claims. Good medical billing companies will have HIPAA compliant communications in place as well as securely manage healthcare data.
Detailed monthly reports, demographic updates, clearinghouses and access to EDIs (Electronic Data Interchange) are common practice. For all of these reasons, using a revenue cycle management company will save medical practices a substantial amount of money.
Reason 4: Related Services for Healthcare Providers
There are actually a wide variety of necessary services that are required for successful medical practices. Successful practices may need healthcare-focused workforce management solutions, patient statement services, web design services, credentialing, digital marketing/SEO, etc.
Whether a medical facility is growing in size or a small practice is just opening their doors, these services will be needed. It is beneficial to have access to these services in one place. In addition, a medical billing company will understand the unique requirements needed by healthcare professionals. Good service is more than just being polite. It also means giving your customers the correct information.
At ABCS RCM, we pride ourselves on the fact that we deliver a complete suite of revenue cycle management tools for healthcare professionals.
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