The core of physician billing services for a medical practice or facility begins with the first contact with the patient and includes every step of dealing with insurers and payers until you receive payment; however, there is more to revenue cycle management (RCM) than that.
There are several aspects of RCM that take place outside the process directly related to patient care. Before a provider can submit claims to most payers, they must go through a “credentialing” process and get set up in the payer’s system. This is especially true of insurance plans that have “in-network” providers.
In order to ensure compliance with all the relevant regulations, regular reviews need to be conducted. And after payments are received, they must be posted, and efficient RCM must also include reports that show the business owners how their revenue is trending and other similar statistics. These are all time-consuming processes that do not have to be done by medical office staff.
How Outsourcing Physician Billing Services Increases Efficiency Within the Practice
By outsourcing RCM tasks, physicians and other medical personnel are able to keep their focus on treating patients rather than medical billing administration. Effective medical billing requires a detailed understanding of the medical codes and knowledge of each payer’s policies. It is rare for a few in-house billers to be able to keep up with the constant changes in addition to remembering all the intricacies of coding when details are required and for uncommon procedures.
An added bonus that comes with freeing up medical staff from the daily responsibility for billing is higher job satisfaction—and less employee turnover is yet another way to cut costs for a medical office.
The Right Medical Billing Service Will Increase Revenue Too
Increasing efficiency should be reason enough to look into hiring a medical billing company, but having professionals managing billing and other aspects of RCM also leads to increased revenue. Medcare MSO’s clients routinely have a revenue increase of at least 10%. These results come largely from the combination of having experienced billers scrub claims to ensure clean claims are submitted, which greatly reduces rejections and denials, and our system of tracking every claim, which ensures that no income is lost due to forgotten claims or avoidance of dealing with payers.
Also Read: Confused About PHR, EMR and EHR? Here’s What They Are and How They Differ
Aging AR accounts are often a major source of lost revenue, but by staying on top of claims and resolving issues when they are noted, claims get paid much more quickly, so bills don’t sit around unresolved and end up exceeding their expiration period.
Medcare MSO is a full-service revenue cycle management company with a history of increasing client revenue by implementing our innovative approach to medical billing and claims management. Our focus is on customer service and tracking each claim until it is paid so that no potential income is lost in the system. For more information, or to find out how we can relieve you of medical billing stress while increasing your revenue, give us a call at 800-640-6409.