Reasons Why you Should Outsource Medical Billing Services

Medical practices take resort to outsourced medical billing services in the wake of healthcare reforms and the revised payment fee schedule. It is predicted that most individual practices will either merge to form group practices or take resort to outsourcing their billing process to strike a balance between their administrative tasks and generating revenue. Specialists provide complete medical billing outsourcing services to medical practitioners and healthcare centers.

The following are areas where healthcare centers or medical practices can reap advantages of choosing a billing partner:

• • Value for Money

Outsourcing the billing process is a lot cheaper than having an in-house team for it. The reasons include cost cutting on infrastructure, equipment, software, salaries for staff, hiring certified coders, availability of employees, and so on. Moreover, the billing vendors are equipped with up-to-date software and the staff is well acquainted in using them.

• • Timeliness in Filing Claims

Physicians will have less worry about timeliness for filing claims, diligence and punctuality of their staff because the billing vendor makes sure all the claims are filed within 24 to 72 hours depending on the specialty and accessibility of the superbills.

• • Round the Clock Availability

Practices have access to customer services 24/7. Online records, customized and detailed reports make it easier for physicians to plan the course of action for altering their RCM to enhance revenue generation.

• • Specialist Coders for Medical Specialty

Hiring certified coders has become costlier than before because of ICD-10. With the final deadline for implementing the new coding standard October 01, 2015 being met, more number of practices are taking recourse to outsourcing their billing to avoid losing revenue due to inaccurate coding.

Besides that, they also get the advantage of experience in particular medical specialties. This is a huge advantage for group practices or multi-specialty clinics.

• • Follow up with Payers

Rejection of claims is a common affair and working on the same claims takes a backseat due to the flurry of fresh claims. Nevertheless, working on it is equally important because aging account receivable (AR) is not healthy for the financial health of medical practices. Outsourced billing processes take this on priority, which substantially helps in keeping the AR days low. Most vendors try to maintain an average AR age, i.e. within 30 – 45 days.

• • Increase in Collections

Statistics indicate that payment collections remain stagnant if the aging AR is left unattended. Timely submission of claims, working on the rejections immediately, following up with the payers and initiating the appeals process – all these ultimately lead to increase in cash inflow.

Although the benefits of outsourcing medical billing depend on a practice’s financial health, size, performance and revenue cycle management (RCM) practices, the reasons mentioned herein are the topmost benefits of hiring a billing partner.

Billing partners work with different insurers and thus know the trend of what leads to more collections. They have a team of experts just to analyze what kind of claims to file first, and how to go about working on the rejections to get reimbursed at the first round of resubmission.