The healthcare industry is the most fast-paced and ever-evolving industry of the modern era. Ongoing changes in healthcare rules and policies of medical billing bring new challenges for practitioners. If you are yet to figure out in-house vs outsourced medical billing services. Or if you are searching for significant reasons why to outsource your medical billing services.
Then read this article thoroughly. While there are a couple of disadvantages to some practices, outsourcing medical billing is one option that can help you allocate your financial and human resources more profitably. If you are still hesitant to relinquish total control over your billing cycle, then consider the following 10 benefits to make a better decision.
Reduce administrative duties
A professional medical billing company would require you to invest fewer dollars and no human resources. It would help you to engage your healthcare staff completely in quality care delivery services, while certified and well-experienced medical billers would keep themselves up-to-date with the changes in medical coding, new modifiers and subsets.
Moreover, your staff will spend less time keying in information and performing administrative tasks. There have been a lot of horror stories about a doctor’s staff being on the phone for two hours or more trying to get pre-authorization from third-party payers while compromising the quality of patient care. It wasted their time and impacted their customer base negatively because this time could also be utilized in educating patients about their conditions or responding to patient portal inquiries.
Verify patient insurance coverage automatically
If your practice currently has inadequate employees to stay on top of medical billing and you could not hire employees during COVID-19 then outsourcing medical billing services would help. Innovative solutions for healthcare revenue cycle management reduce time spent on phone checking coverage and let your staff focus on medical service proactively. A reliable medical billing company has to automate insurance verification solutions that can boost your revenue collection at a significant rate. Experienced billing companies provide transparent solutions and complete access to immediate information about whether a patient has met their deductibles, maxed out their numbers of visits for a particular illness or become ineligible due to job change or other reasons.
Even if your practice is suffering from financial burden and you are not finding any place to cut down operational costs to sustain the financial health of your business then you may be struggling to stay afloat. Many small practices don’t have the operating budget to support a full-time medical billing office. Some doctors are facing difficulty to recruit and train new employees due to the lock down situation; they have high turnover rates because of the stress in an office where everyone has to assume responsibility for many tasks. It isn’t always easy to find ways to reduce payroll costs. However, physicians should look for ways to adopt smart solutions for medical billing and coding services.
Enhance cash flow and reduce operating cost:
When you outsource revenue cycle management practices then you could absolutely boost revenue potential as much as 30 percent. Typically, you get paid faster, with less effort from practice staff members. Moreover, you also don’t have to invest in on-going training. A company that completely focuses on medical billing usually has state-of-the-art technology and staff trained to maximize coding for higher revenue generation.
Improve patient engagement and satisfaction rates:
Most importantly, outsourcing medical billing services lessens the stress from physicians and helps them to spend more time in care delivery. In addition to this, your physicians can focus more on patients resulting in a higher quality of care. Thus, it would help physicians to develop long-term relationships with their patients easily. As patients would feel that physicians, lab technicians and nurses are spending more time interacting with them and not just interested in getting them in and out of the door.
Process claims faster:
Advanced medical billing solutions will make your practice more productive and efficient. Because automating same-day claims submission will optimize your cash flow. Generally, a generic system may take as long as two months to transit through all the channels prior to reimbursement. They ensure clean claim submission that is coded appropriately for maximum reimbursement. Despite this, when backed with support in the EHR, it can result in maximum reimbursement in 7 to 14 days. So it leverages your bottom line significantly.
Eliminate or significantly reduce billing and coding errors:
Outsourcing medical billing services saves your practice time and expenses. It also boosts up reimbursement as the company scrubs claims and looks for simple errors that may slow down payments. Advanced solutions for medical billing and coding guarantee error-free claims and create a trust-worthy relationship with insurance carriers. Hence, it results in fewer denials, fewer claims penned for additional information and less work for your practice team.
Moreover, another benefit that comes from reducing errors is that it makes you sure to drive your practice management decisions from accurate and hard data and develop your confidence in your business practices. A reputable medical billing company will provide you all data that you require to comply with your financial aspects. It would provide you a comprehensive knowledge of which insurance carriers pay faster than others. It would also provide you knowledge of which patient services are most likely to be challenged and whether or not your office is collecting self-pay and copayments at the time of service.
Outsourcing medical billing services would make you stress-free from managing and configuring huge data to monitor revenue collection propagation. A third-party would provide you complete support, tools and transparent solutions to manage your data. Hence, practice managers can use that data to improve and optimize internal workflow and performance. Perhaps, the greatest benefit is the way this repetitious cycle continues to provide more accurate and helpful information that allows physicians and administrators to identify ways to make their organizations more productive, more efficient and less costly to operate.
Keep patient data secure:
The most significant factor that prevents physicians from outsourcing medical billing services is internet security or data breaching. It is critical to protect patient and practice data. We have all read about data breaches that exposed private health information and caused critical hazards for businesses. Private health record information is more valuable than any other type in the criminal market.
Some experts state that a personal medical file can bring 10 to 20 times more money for data breachers than any other type of digital data; like a credit card number. It is expensive to maintain a rigorous IT system to guard privileged information. If you outsource your medical billing services to a professional firm that has HIPAA compliance certification then they will protect patient information more with a certain responsibility. Certainly, they invest their money and not your practice to ensure the possibility of unauthorized data access is minimal.
Frees Up Your Time:
Owning and managing each aspect of medical practice is far from a walk in the park. As a physician, it is nearly impossible to keep up with all aspects of your healthcare business. Usually, physicians are always engaged in the clinical side and they always have enough tasks without adding one more item to their plate.
Medical billing experts know that doctors don’t have time to be worrying about healthcare claim submission or if a claim was paid. Working with a medical billing company saves physicians enough time to shift their focus back on what really matters to their patients.
Keep Tabs On Changing Regulations:
Medical billing and coding is an ever-evolving aspect of the healthcare practice. Because there are always new rules and guidelines to follow each year. It is extremely challenging for providers to comply with all the changes. Outsourcing your medical billing process to industry experts would help you save your practice from the hassle of uncollected payment and issues like claims denials. They would make it a point to stay up-to-date with the billing and coding changes.
You can provide quality patient care:
When the medical billing procedures are outsourced to a professional medical billing company. Then physicians would have more time to focus on the patients rather than handling the headache of their billing process. Therefore, it makes sense to invest your time into your core capabilities like patient care. As a result, you can make your patients satisfied with your practice.
Conclusion:
COVID-19 has brought a host of challenges for industrial growth all around the world. Physicians and other healthcare practitioners are finding it extremely difficult to manage every aspect of their healthcare practice. Hence, they should partner with a reliable medical billing company that can sustain their valuable customer-base. Similarly, they must nurture the financial health of their organization.
Hiring and training new staff to manage medical billing is impossible due to lock down and National Emergency announced by the Trump administration. Hence, physicians should outsource medical billing services to not let their practice compromise with the ongoing situation. Medical Billing Benefits provide the latest and update healthcare news to make you abreast of changes in medical procedures, health insurance and managed care. Contact Us! To schedule a free business consultation.
Related Tag: Why are practitioners unable to maintain successful physician billing services in COVID-19 pandemic?