Medical practitioners have a lot to do when it comes to handling the patient from start to finish. With the continued changes in the health care laws, it is not easy to keep up. Higher deductibles and co-pays cause patients to be discouraged and if the doctor has to spend more time in his or her practice with less patient time, then it results in more discouragement and frustration on the part of the patient. In many cases, the physician will start to lose patients and subsequently tons of money in the process.
Finding a Solution
What can be done to alleviate and prevent this from happening? Instead of ignoring the problem, physicians should consider ways to tackle the problem to free up time for patients. Outsourcing your medical billing to a third party will not only do this, but it will take care of other issues such as dealing with the annoying insurance companies, medical claim denials and in many cases, underpayments and ignored medical claims. With changes in medical coding standards, a third party medical billing company is the ideal option for managing and maintaining an efficient process to increase revenue and get more medical claims approved.
The Outsourcing Option
When you outsource medical billing and coding, it works out to be more cost effective. Why? Well, most medical billing companies charge a fee based on percentage of monies collected. So, it is in their best interest to be diligent about collecting on medical claims submitted and to resubmit claims that may be initially denied. The in-house staff doesn’t have the time to follow up with such and as a result, outsourcing will allow the staff to be more efficient and helpful as it relates to the patients. In addition, having an in-house staff will only make it more expensive to maintain proper medical billing procedures. There will be a higher cost to train the staff, provide employee benefits, pay employee salaries and purchase software. The third party medical billing service already has trained professionals and the appropriate software to do all of this.
The Expertise
With a third party medical company, there is more expertise with billing and coding services. The company will provide their own software for revenue cycle management and for maintaining electronic medical records. At times, for an additional fee, the medical billing company will also provide other services such as:
a.) Appointment reminders
b.) Patient follow-up
c.) Data reporting
d.) Verification of eligibility
Conclusion
Most third party medical billing companies are HIPAA certified and keep abreast of the changes to the healthcare reform. Therefore, as you can see, using a medical billing company comes with more benefits, allowing the medical practitioner to increase productivity and revenue.