Can you afford to outsource your medical billing?
Or is this a case of being too busy running next to your bike to get on it? If this scenario rings any bells, have you considered the following:
- Are you or your secretary invoicing the maximum fees to each insurer? Do you know the details of their individual fee schedules?
- How many of your invoices remain unpaid at the end of the year and are written off?
- Are you/your secretary reconciling all your payments accurately and raising the appropriate shortfall invoices?
- How effective is your practice at chasing unpaid invoices? It can take 30 minutes just waiting on hold to speak to some insurance companies. And that’s just for one invoice query.
- How much do you value your time? Would you be better to spend your time marketing and promoting your business?
Invoicing and credit control services are bread and butter for professional billing companies. Unless they do it well, they are out of business. They are experts and therefore know the ins and outs, how to charge the correct fees to insurers and how to ensure you receive the fees due to you.
Billing companies have in-house processes to ensure you receive the maximum fees that each insurer pays….and if you think this isn’t that important the difference between insurers can be hundreds of pounds for the same procedure.
Without dedicated time and processes for chasing up outstanding invoices, it is all too easy for the volume of unpaid invoices to rise and before long you are writing off typically up to 15% at the end of the year. Do you know how many of your invoices are unpaid? If you have practice management software, run an aged debt report and see for yourself – you may be surprised.
One area often neglected is the importance of checking the exact amount received into your bank account with the amount on the remittance advice – do not assume they are the same or correct! Without accurate reconciliation your accountancy fees may go through the roof at the end of the year. Wouldn’t it be better to know that the payments received in your bank account and your patient records tally to the penny? If you do half a job throughout the year it will come back to bite you at year end, and you will pay for this!
And finally you and your secretary’s time is better spent promoting and marketing your practice, not to mention providing clinical services, rather than chasing money. If you spread yourself too thinly your practice will suffer. Outsourcing your medical billing to a company that has experience in this field will not only ensure you receive money due to you, but will relieve you of the hassle of doing it yourself, and as an added bonus the costs are tax deductible. There really is very little to lose.
