Benefits of medical billing services

The main reasons to choose a medical billing service are all centered on saving money. In the long run, hiring a billing service should lead to more bottom line income for your practice – even when you factor in the billing company's fees.

The most direct cost savings come from eliminating much of the time office staff spend processing your claims. When you consider the costs of a full-time employee, including salary, health care, training, and insurance, you'll find it can be significantly cheaper to outsource your billing. Outsourced billing also allows staff members to focus on other activities.

Medical billing services can even do a better job than in-house staff in several areas. For instance, billing services constantly work to keep their staff up to date on changing codes and insurance regulations, which can reduce rejected and denied claims. Keeping up with these changes can be difficult for a busy practice.

Also, when claims are returned from the clearinghouse, medical billing services work to turn them around and resubmit corrected forms as soon as possible. In-house staff juggling several roles may not always be able to deliver this turnaround time.

In addition, medical billing services have a greater incentive to increase collections, since they're paid based on a percentage of the money they bring in. In-house employees are typically paid the same salary regardless of the amount they collect. Having a third party handle claims also provides some insurance against fraud or shoddy work, since both your internal staff and the billing provider will review every claim.

Finally, because they process high volumes of claims, billing services tend to get faster turnaround from clearinghouses than individual doctors: you may start seeing insurance payments in 10 to 14 days, instead of a month or two.

Are medical billing services right for you?

Medical billing services are useful for many different types of health care providers. On the small end, solo practitioners often don't have the time or the expertise to handle billing in-house: just keeping up with demands of building a successful practice is enough of a challenge. Larger practices, clinics, and hospitals may also see significant results from even a small percentage increase in collections, making a billing service worthwhile for them, too.

Not every health care professional is a good candidate for a billing service, though. If your volume of patients is low, it may be hard to reach a deal that makes sense for you and the billing service. For example, psychologists and chiropractors may only see 5 to 10 patients a day, and have relatively low reimbursement rates. For most billing services to cover their costs, they would have to charge a high percentage that would be unacceptable to these types of practices.