Anyone who has gone to a physician’s practice can tell how busy they are, but no one knows this more than the office administrator responsible for every organizational function required to treat patients and run an effective business. Physicians and office staff prioritize giving their patients the best quality of care most efficiently. An office administrator has to balance that priority with many others.
The revenue cycle management process is one of the top responsibilities of an administrator. Physician practices and hospitals require constant monitoring to ensure the balance of incoming cash with outgoing expenses. The medical billing role needs to be a high priority for the administration. Physicians and ancillary providers get paid based on the work that they complete, but unlike other service industries, they must jump through myriad hoops to get the money owed to them.
This process is as essential to the longevity of the practice as treating patients. Due to its high priority and need for expert oversight, many practices outsource this function to a medical billing company. Outsourcing will provide many efficiencies to the practice. Here are a few of them.
Constant Change Costs Money and Time
The rules change for medical billing each year (and sometimes more than once). There are code changes in both CPT and ICD, and rules are defined for how and when to bill. Keeping the right staff on board to manage these presents its own challenge. Internal members often barely stay ahead of the daily billing and collections. Factor in staff changes or shortages, and your AR days and collections quickly become uncontrollable. The lack of time to understand the updates may cause the practice to leave money behind because of wrong codes, missed fee adjustments, and data entry errors.
Outsourced medical billing services have the staff to ensure that providers get the most out of their services. These businesses focus only on medical billing, so they can stay on top of the following things and communicate updates to you only when change is needed:
- Coding requirements
- Fee schedule adjustments
- Technology advancements
- Telehealth popularity
Outsourced Medical Billing Services Is a Specialty
Physicians specialize in a particular specialty for a reason: it’s nearly impossible to know everything about everything. Outsourcing your practice’s billing to a company that specializes in medical billing provides you with experts in the field. They can help you solve long-standing problems quickly and establish a solid revenue cycle plan.
A reliable medical billing company will work closely with you to understand pertinent details and develop a plan that gives you a robust revenue cycle management process. You could expect things like these within a short period:
- Cleaner claims
- Improved AR days
- Faster payment
- Less follow-up/fewer patient calls
- Increased revenue
- Removal of technology issues
Have you ever calculated the number of hours lost by computer downtime? If you haven’t, you may want to consider creating a tally sheet for your team. Your medical billing staff is already pushed to the limit, and losing even thirty to forty-five minutes from their workday puts everything behind. While you may have technical issues in other departments, your money will not be delayed due to them. Here are a few benefits of removing the stress of technology from your billing department:
- Fewer support calls for forgotten passwords
- Less interaction with the IT team to troubleshoot an issue
- Less time spent ordering upgraded equipment
- Less training and data entry time during software updates
- More downtime for your staff and you
Improve Reporting Data from Outsourced Medical Billing Services
To run a business effectively, you must have access to data showing how your business is performing. This data should be as detailed as you want and available as often as needed. Getting it out of your billing system meaningfully can be challenging and usually requires a specialized resource. That technical report developer will likely have a waitlist that you must get on, and you’ll be charged a high consultant fee per hour.
When you utilize an outsourced medical billing company, this data will be presented to you when and how you need it, so you can make informed decisions for your business. Showing up to a meeting with providers armed with relevant details will help you make changes to workflows or policies. Here are several reasons that data and reporting will boost your efficiency and enable better daily planning.
- Detailed reports enable you to give specific data to providers and staff, assisting in change control and issues resolution.
- Workflow issues can be identified through data anomalies and corrected.
- Budgets are simpler to do when you have the facts.
- You can identify growth areas or potential new service lines with the correct data.
Outsourcing your practice’s medical billing component may seem unnerving. When you work with the right partner, you create a specialized extension of your practice while improving your efficiency. StarkBilling is a specialist in its field and strives to be a partner that you can trust and depend on.
Outsourcing your medical billing to StarkBilling eliminates the time-consuming process of providing continuing education to staff in order to keep up with insurance and HIPAA regulations. Contact us today.
