It's not news nowadays that
healthcare providers are heavily outsourcing their medical billing services to
professional companies to look after their medical billing and collections. A
number of physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, urgent care centres,
laboratories, DME companies, and other entities associated with the healthcare
industry have realized the need for professional handling to regain focus on
revenue recovery mainly through the reduction in operational costs.
There lies another challenge
ahead - to find out the proper medical billing service, which can provide you
with the solution you are looking at your budget. It is extremely important to
research rigorously by self-defined parameters for selecting the desired
service. However, some common factors that can be broadly considered essential
for most healthcare providers can be discussed:
Points to Ponder
Some basic points that cannot be
overlooked in your search for the desired medical billing assistance will include
the following:
• Accurate and efficient service:
Go for the medical billing services that can take the onus of all your billing
collections - accurate, complete, and timely payment from the third party
payers and patients through latest technology to attain maximum efficiency in
the system.
• Excellent references: Revenue
is the key focus and you need more business for that and for more business you
need more references. Look for medical billing services that have enough
experience and reputation to provide you excellent referrals from physicians.
• Expert coding: Coding is one of
the most important aspects of medical billing in this time of EMR and EHR
technology. Sought medical billing services that can provide you with the
required expertise in ICD-10 coding. Due to an absence of certified and experienced
coders in their in-house team, most of the practices suffer from common coding
issues like:
o Unbundling: Unbundling involves
listing of different billing codes for charging for services falling under one
billing code. This results in bill getting inflated because the items that
should have been billed as a package rate get billed separately.
o Balance billing: This coding
error arises when the balance bill sent to the patient after the insurance
company's price negotiation with the care provider and all of the hospital's
charges are supposed to be covered under the patient's policy.
o Duplicate Billing: Another
common billing error, which involves multiple bills getting generated for the
same procedures or services.
• Dedicated account management:
Always prefer a service that provides you, experts, to dedicatedly look after
your collections without any extra charge. The account managers should always
be within your communication range to provide assistance during an emergency.
• Flexible services: Sometimes
you might need a single service like prior authorization. Choose a medical
billing service that can offer you standalone services as and when required and
not charge for a whole package for RCM or other packages. It should also be
flexible enough to work in both the electronic and manual platforms as per the
requirement.
• Special edge: A great and a
good medical billing service can be distinguished by the virtue of that
'something special' it offers. A great medical billing service can maintain a
seamless healthcare management through cutting-edge services for the patients,
providing your practice with the professional guidance it needs to complete a
comprehensive end-to-end revenue cycle management. An experienced and reliable
company can do the trick for you by achieving the seamless overall transitions
from your time and cash stripped condition to making your practice
revenue-healthy, up, and running.
Errors, both electronic and human
can nag your practice from getting the desired result. Signing a really able
medical billing service will provide you with the shield from those errors
saving you unnecessary loss of time and money!
He is an account manager with
immense experience in RCM solutions in the Pan-American healthcare domain. He
is always advisable to consider certain factors to select the right one from
the numerous professional medical billing services working in the industry.