Medical billing is a necessary part of our healthcare system, and you can’t talk about one without the other. Proper billing ensures that you and your employees get paid for the services they provide. However, you don’t want to be so consumed with the financial aspect of having a medical practice that you can’t offer proper medical support. It then begs the question, can you outsource your medical billing? The short answer is absolutely. The slightly longer answer is not only can it—it probably should be. Why should you outsource your medical billing? We have six compelling reasons.
Lower Costs
Let’s first address the elephant in the room. Despite what some may think, the cost of outsourcing medical billing is not prohibitive. In fact, it can be very cost effective when you consider the other expenses it renders inconsequential. No matter how many billing claims your private practice has to make, a dedicated billing company has many, many more. What this means for you is that medical billing companies can take care of each bill at a fraction of the cost a private practice would have to pay. These savings get passed on to you.
You can also save on things like equipment, billing software, and office supplies, as well as salaries and benefits of billing consultants and employees not attending to patient care. Employees need to be paid irrespective of how many patients come in for treatment, making salaries a fixed expense. In contrast, outsourcing billing services charge a percentage of the bill—a variable expense—meaning the bill you pay is proportional to the number of claims you file, fewer claims, smaller bills.
Handling Tricky Billing Issues
One of the benefits of outsourcing medical billing services is that someone specifically trained to do so handles the less appealing parts of financial transactions. If bills are not paid on time, a medical billing company is equipped to handle the situation. They can also take care of rebilling in the case of mistakes or rejections. Save yourself the headache and worry, and let our experts manage it.
Get Paid Faster
The expertise of a medical billing outsourcing company is, unsurprisingly, billing. All our time and resources can be devoted to the billing process, correcting any mistakes or attending to any changes. This means that less time is spent in tedious bookkeeping and money gets back to you sooner.
Improved Returns
Billing companies have been known to perform 15% better at collecting bills than private practice billing departments. That is money that goes directly into your coffers. A billing company can also mitigate the cost of unpaid bills (an unglamorous part of running any business) significantly because they devote all their attention to the billing process. This means your practice will be more profitable when you outsource your medical billing services instead of taking care of them in-house.
By the Book
When you outsource your medical billing, you choose to have consistency in your records. We have prescribed methods and procedures, so you can be sure the work is being done the same way every time. This will not necessarily be the case if you recruit in-house employee(s) to attend to it as they can. Even if you hire a dedicated person to handle the billing, that person may leave the practice, and you will be back to square one.
Medical billing companies have fewer mistakes to contend with as a general rule because professionals, not temp employees, take care of the details. They are also regularly trained in any procedural changes to ensure billing compliance. The standard of what is required in billing paperwork and procedures changes with regularity, so if you do not outsource your medical billing, you should expect to devote time routinely to research to make sure you are current.
Keep Your Focus on Healthcare
The most important effect of choosing to outsource your medical billing is that you will have more time to focus on treating patients. Submitting your own bills is never just a matter of paperwork. Correcting errors, monitoring the process, and doing fee reviews also require attention, and while you do that, patients who need your help are not receiving it. Free up your time for patients and their care and outsource your medical billing.
At Aspen Ridge Medical, we provide medical billing services in FL for small practices as well as larger offices. If you let us manage the tedium of billing, you can get back to doing what you do best: offering quality care to your patients. Give us a call today to learn how you can outsource your medical billing.