Tag: Alex Tate

Why Is Everyone Outsourcing Medical Billing, and Even If they Are, Why Should I?

Alex Tate
Alex Tate

Guest post by Alex Tate.

Being a diehard Kennedy fan, this is what I’d normally quote to someone purchasing the latest commodity, or acquiring the latest service that everyone is flocking to stores to get – Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. However, outsourcing medical billing is a different ballgame altogether.  

I’m often confronted by worried physicians who are already overwhelmed by a recent deployment of an electronic health record (EHR) system at their practice when they hear that the clinic next door is outsourcing medical billing. With an expression that could easily pass off as ICD-9 code number 564.0 (a person suffering from constipation), the hesitantly ask me this: “Why is everyone outsourcing medical billing; and even if they are, why should I?”

In response to all those people and all the physicians out there having similar questions, here’s why:

1.     It costs significantly lesser

Medical billing companies charge rates as low as three percent of your monthly collections to handle this process for you. Compare this with the costs of a dedicated medical billing department at your practice, and the difference will be significantly lower.

The salaries of the staff won’t be the only cost there, as they’ll need a room or office space to work in, desks and chairs to work on, dedicated equipment (computers, fax machines, printers), and miscellaneous expenses, such as stationary in addition to utility costs. Now when you accumulate all of this with the insurance packages of these staff personnel and the maintenance of this equipment, you’ll realize that the percentage of collections work out a lot cheaper.

2.     A large staff base

Each practice assigns a specific budget for billing according to which many small and medium sized practices are able to employ one or two billers who handle all of the practice’s billing related tasks.

More often than not, these understaffed and overworked personnel come across situations whereby they have to decide between negotiating over denied and underpaid claims, or moving on to the numerous pending cases. Given their constraints, they choose to move on, settling for lower (sometimes zero) payments on such claims.

The large staff base of a medical billing company will rid you of this problem as they’ll have different personnel to handle different processes, resulting in the maximization of reimbursements.

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How EHR Adoption Benefits Healthcare Providers

Alex Tate
Alex Tate

Guest post by Alex Tate.

Implementation of electronic health records is considered a national priority in this era of healthcare reform. However if EHRs are not implemented correctly they can be painful.

EHRs that are not implemented effectively can affect productivity and revenue. The extra documentation requirements and intricate workflows create distance between physicians and their patients. Physicians have reported that they spend too much time on EHRs and that they don’t get enough time to interact with their patients. But physicians often communicate that spending time on EHRs is crucial to creating a trusted set of structured data that can guide their business. Every click that providers make creates important data points that can be used to inform the efficient delivery of their practice.

Every EHR saves a large amount of data inside it regarding patient health, effectiveness of treatments, system efficiency and provider tendencies. Despite the extra time and effort that is dedicated to electronic documentation, many practices and physicians do not make full use of this precious data set that they have produced.

If a practice can get its EHR adoption right they can make a number of positive results, some of which are mentioned below:

Revenue Gains

By overcoming the difficulties providers can see more patients and will be able to generate more billed revenue using its existing staff. Furthermore, if a provider is using its EHR efficiently then the improved documentation produces billing at higher rates, combined with increased patient flow. This represents significant potential revenue.

Quick Cash Flow

Many of the practices work on revenue cycle management, but few make it flawless. With increased charge accuracy and reduced time for denials, there will be an increase in the yield with timely reimbursements by the payers.

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