Decisions, Decisions:

The decision to contract out medical Billing operations or keep them inhouse is one that many doctors, owners, and Practice managers debate upon often. There is no right answer to this question, but different factors affect this decision: how long the practice has been in business, how many local billers there are, and current state of the practices budget, along with other protentional factors.

Looking Closely at your Procedures:

Aside from patient care, revenue cycle management and day to day billing is the most important tasks of your practice. Your revenue to keep your practice running depends on how these tasks are taken care of, so the decision of contracting or continuing to keep your billing procedures inhouse shouldn’t be taken lightly. You need to do a thorough examination of your current staff, what it is costing you to have an in-house biller verses contracting out your billing, or if your practice manager is doing the billing how you can better use their time besides billing procedures.

The Big Picture:

In the beginning stages of the decision-making process you’ll need to take an overview look at what most doctors and administrators consider to be the advantages that contracting out can offer. Number one, which you will hear most doctors, owners, and Practice Managers speak of, is how much less you pay to handle your billing when outsourced. A good example when most doctors and practice managers turn to a billing company is when an employee quits or resigns without notice or when you are just starting your practice.

Your billing process is inefficient. If your collections have turned into outstanding balances while the time to collect becomes longer, you have high possibilities of issues in your medical billing department. Contracting out to a medical billing company statistically brings down the number of rejected claims and decreases the amount of time it takes to be paid in full in claims.

Again, there is no right answer when deciding whether to contract out your billing processes, but if you want to be cost effective in your practice and save your practice time to better focus on patient care then I would say contracting out is the way to go.

The post Practice or Paperwork: What would you prefer? appeared first on Vanan HealthCare.