Medical billing is the key to keeping any home healthcare agency, hospice, or other medical provider running smoothly. Since it’s such a crucial part of your operations, it’s understandable to want to control this administrative function. However, outsourcing medical billing services can positively impact your business. Why outsource medical billing services? Here, we outline how doing so will enhance your operations and boost customer satisfaction.
Benefits of Outsourcing Medical Billing
If you’re on the fence about outsourcing your medical billing services, consider these advantages:
Shorter Revenue Cycles
Handling medical billing services in-house increases your administrative team’s workload. Your medical billers may be required to manage other facets of your business operations, limiting their time spent assessing and submitting medical bills.
Team members focusing on more than one task can be more prone to making mistakes. Since your team needs to correct these errors and resubmit bills, you go longer without receiving payment.
Outsourcing medical billing gives you access to experienced professionals who can evaluate medical bills for errors before sending them. With fewer errors, you get paid on more bills faster, which improves your cash flow.
Access to Technology
Professional medical billing services use technology to improve processes and turn your bills around faster. The latest billing software can flag medical bills for errors and prompt the biller to fix them before submitting the bill. Some software will also analyze your recent bills and identify common mistakes.
Outsourcing medical billing services saves you from having to purchase new software and upgrade subscriptions as technology advances.
More Time To Treat Clients
Letting a professional company tackle your medical billing services frees you up to focus on your patients. Your office managers can focus on updating medical records, training staff, optimizing schedules, and tackling tasks that often go overlooked.
Freeing up your administrative team gives your doctors, nurses, and other caregivers resources for offloading some of their tasks. Instead of spending a lot of time on paperwork, they can focus on developing and executing care plans.
Better Transparency
When working with your medical billing provider, you may require specific reports to assess performance. These progress reports and other analytics information can give you insights into how you’re managing your practice.
Over time, you can accurately track reliable revenue sources and identify areas in which you can improve. For example, you can see if certain insurance providers are consistently underpaying and contact them to see how you can fix the problem to collect full payments.
Cost Savings
Outsourcing medical billing services seems pricey, but you can end up saving money over time. You don’t have to keep purchasing and updating software. You also don’t have to hire and train medical billing and coding specialists or pay for on-the-job training as medical codes and regulations change.
Additionally, medical billers can recoup your money faster, boosting your agency’s financial performance. Professional medical billing services have greater capacity to review and process claims and fix billing errors. You can submit more bills in the same amount of time and collect timely payments.
How To Choose a Medical Billing Provider
When you’ve decided to take the plunge, assess your needs and find the right provider for you. Follow these steps:
Define Your Needs
Are you a small practice with relatively few patients? Are you a large, complex practice offering a wide range of services? Your company’s size and complexity will affect your choice. Look for a company that works with practices of similar size and complexity.
Assess Your Specialty
Healthcare agencies are not all the same, so you want a company that works with others in your field. For example, as a home care or hospice agency, you may have additional codes and regulations that impact payments, particularly when you’re working with Medicare and Medicaid.
You want people with experience in your sector of the healthcare industry so they know the right codes and billing practices. Ask each potential provider about their experience and their client roster.
Consider Compliance
Every medical billing provider is required to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other industry regulations regarding patient data. Before selecting a vendor, ask them to share their compliance practices and detail how they keep patient data secure.
Earlier this year, for example, Change Healthcare, one of the largest health payment processing companies, was hacked because the company did not use multi-factor authentication to secure its system. The company fell victim to a ransomware attack. Although they paid the attackers and managed to get back to business as usual, thousands of patients had their personal data stolen, and clients were unable to get paid for weeks as the company got its systems back online.
Ask your medical billing provider about security procedures and whether they use multiple clearinghouses to keep processing payments in case of a security event. Have each potential provider walk you through their procedures following a security breach so you know you’re in good hands.
Determine Your Budget
Once you’ve narrowed down potential medical billing providers, ask about pricing options and find the best company for you. Many providers offer different billing models depending on your needs. Look for providers whose base tier offers all the services you need and add-on services as you need them.
Choose a provider with flexibility so you can scale your medical billing as your practice grows. If you expand your services, you need a company that can keep up with the increased demand without compromising quality.
Let PUREDI Take Care of You
PUREDI’s 100% cloud-based, intelligent solution is built on two decades of experience in revenue cycle management. We combine proven industry knowledge with advanced technology to shorten your revenue cycles and collect more money. We partner with multiple clearinghouses, allowing you to keep collecting revenue in the event of a data breach, and we remain compliant with industry rules and regulations.
Choose a subscription model or more robust revenue cycle management services. Learn more about how we can help your practice enhance its financial success. Schedule a demo today.
