What Features to Look for When You Outsource Medical Billing

Are you looking for a solution to your medical billing needs? As you review your options, make sure you outsource medical billing to a service with these key features.

When you’re looking to outsource medical billing, you need to make sure that the solution your choose delivers a return on investment.

Healthcare costs have skyrocketed to become about 17% of the national GDP in the United States. That’s largely due to patient no-shows and inefficient delivery of services.

When you hire medical billing services, you can have a more efficient office and with the right features, see a significant return on investment.

Read on to learn what the top features your medical billing service should have for the biggest impact.

Insurance Verification

How often have you had patients come to the office only to discover that their insurance expired after services were rendered?

It becomes an awkward situation for your staff and your patients because not all of them can pay out of pocket.

One of the top features of medical billing software is that your staff can easily determine insurance eligibility before the appointment. It saves your staff from having to break the news to someone that their insurance expired and saves the embarrassment of your patient who can’t pay.

Insurance verification before the appointment also cuts down on canceled appointments and creates better relationships with your patients.

Electronic Claims Processing

Claims processing is one of the most time consuming, and important tasks that your staff can do.

It’s how your office generates revenue, but it’s time-consuming because there are mistakes on claims and they need to be resubmitted.

The average cost to resubmit a claim is $25. That doesn’t seem like a bad statistic on the surface, but that cost adds up.

On top of that, about half of those denials don’t get reworked.

That could cost your clinic thousands of dollars every single month.

With electronic claims processing, you can save time on processing claims, which will result in savings.

As an additional bonus, you’ll save and earn even more money because electronic claims allow you to audit the claims before their submitted.

Your staff will be able to catch potential issues before claims are processed.

On the off chance that a claim is bounced back, some billing software suites offer automated resubmission of claims.

That takes the stress out of your staff to spend the time and resources to figure out why a claim was rejected.

EDI Support

The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) allows doctors to file claims electronically with Medicare Parts A and B.

Having EDI support will allow you to get those claims processed much faster. In turn, your clinic will receive payments more quickly, too.

Electronic Superbill Support

Electronic superbills are complicated bills to create because each part of the patient’s visit is itemized.

For some patients, that can create extensive bills, and it’s easy for things to be overlooked.

With electronic superbills, you can add items as the patient is receiving services.

Some medical billing software will create a superbill for the patient when the appointment is booked.

When the patient arrives at your office, you can add items for services, codes, and items dispensed to the patient.

You can then create a superbill when your work with the patient is complete and submit it electronically for payment.

This simplifies the process by adding items as you go, as opposed to trying to fill out a Word template after the fact.

Collection Reminders

Sometimes, vendors and patients forget to pay their bills on time. Rather than taking valuable staff time to make collections calls to chase the money down, let your medical billing software take care of it for you.

One great feature of this software is that it automatically follows up with anyone who has an overdue payment.

These can be done in the form of emails or soft collections notices that are sent to the patient.

HIPPA Compliant

While most billing suites are HIPPA compliant, there are still a few out on the market that aren’t.

Don’t assume that because medical billing services are offered, that they’ll be fully compliant with HIPPA and other regulations.

Practice Management Features

Depending on the needs of your practice, you may need to go beyond medical billing services and expand into full-on practice management software.

Practice management software often has similar features as medical billing software. The critical difference is that practice management suites offer much more than just billing features.

You will find that some billing solutions offer add-ons that give you full practice management.

These services include scheduling, appointment reminders billing, inventory, calendar management, and automatic check-up reminders.

You could have a practice management suite as a solo practitioner or as a large office.

What Else to Consider When You Outsource Medical Billing

If you plan to outsource medical billing, you do have a few decisions to make.

The first decision is to know whether you’re going to outsource to a billing services company or invest in medical billing software.

You’ll then have to decide what level of services you want for your practice.

Do you need to have a full suite of practice management services or do you just need medical billing?

When deciding on software, there’s an option to have a cloud-based solution or to have the software installed at your office.

The advantage of cloud-based software is that you can access information from just about anywhere.

You’ll also want to make sure that the software meets your needs by taking the software for a test drive.

Most companies offer a demo for doctors to see the software in action.

The level of technical support, set-up and additional fees, and the number of users should be considered as well.

Finally, you want to make sure the suite you choose has positive reviews. Review this buyer’s guide before you invest in medical billing services.

Ready to Outsource Medical Billing?

Outsourcing medical billing is a smart decision because it frees up your staff to help you grow your practice.

It also improves patient care, reduces billing errors and improves your bottom line because payments come in on time.

Ready to outsource medical billing now?

You don’t have to spend time researching and reviewing different services. We already did that work for you.

Take a look at these reviews to get started today.

Author: Mike Cynar

Mike Cynar brings buyers and sellers together by producing reviews and creating non biased webpages allowing users to share their experiences on various products and services. He and his staff write informative articles related to the medical field, legal, and other small business industries.