When you enter a hospital or a clinic, we are pretty confident that you directly head into the reception, confirm your appointment, see your doctor and the nurse, submit your insurance claims, head straight to the pharmacy, and exit the healthcare center. The medical assistants, doctors, staff are all important people but did you know that there is another working tirelessly like their peers to keep the healthcare center running smoothly? We are talking about the medical billing team.

Medical billing is laborious and a challenging operation to run. These individuals are responsible for the billing processes. Their job is to submit the claims and ensure the insurance providers reimburse for the services used by the patient. If you do not send the appropriate bills to your patients, your account receivables team is likely to suffer huge distress followed by a decline in your collection rates. In small medical practices, the challenges are plenty with just a handful of people. It is one of the main reasons why physicians and healthcare teams should outsource medical billing services to a medical billing company, specifically to a reputable medical billing company like Velan.

Why outsource your medical billing services?

When you are mulling over outsourcing your medical billing services, make sure you have all the right reasons. It is not a compulsion to outsource your medical billing services.

If you decide to take that plunge, your business will

• be in a better position,
• Follow a streamlined and sustainable approach for your finance department.

The real value of outsourcing medical billing is its long-term viability. The doctors, number of patients, staffing levels, other hospital demands will keep changing over time. A medical billing company can still be consistent in producing the results as opposed to the internal team who might be plagued with too much work.

In fact, the benefits of outsourcing medical billing are plenty, and they expand to all areas of your medical practice.

11 key benefits of outsourcing medical billing services

1. Be sure of your patient’s insurance eligibility

For insurance to be processed by their insurance service providers, your patient’s insurance must be current, valid, and eligible for claims. It is dire exhaustion to employ resources just to validate the eligibility of insurance. If your team is going to do that validation, it is going to cost them a lot of time in addition to the heaps of work they already have.

On the flip side, if you have a medical billing company do this for you, you can be sure of the payment hitting your healthcare account. Your medical billing company will be

• cognizant of your patient’s details,
• their deductible or what expenses be covered,
• Which expenses need pre-consent, etc?

2. Faster and secure insurance payments

Medical billing and coding errors are prone to happen with your staff. We are not accusing your staff of the mistakes, but the little time they have to complete a lot of work. When these billing errors are curtailed, payments and reimbursements will happen quickly and securely. By engaging with an expert medical billing company, you can enjoy the benefits of an efficient workflow, increased revenue, and better returns for your medical practice. This, in turn, will cut corners and clear payments more efficiently.

The reason is obvious: a medical billing service company is a pro at dealing with the codes, and their staff will hold an upper hand as compared to your staff.

3. Expert consulting

Insurance billing and its process are complex. There are continual changes to it, and your patients will not be aware of them unless they encounter a situation. To deal with such a crisis and attending to all the (basic) questions they may have, you need to have dedicated staff who can take the blow.

Outsourcing is the best option. Your customers will be redirected to expert consultants who can handle as trivial questions as possible. It will also curtail your administrative requirements like hiring dedicated customer support staff, computers, desks, internet connection, phones, etc.

4. Improve your productivity

Medical billing is a full-time profession. It requires one to stay on the top to handle the large volume of transactions. Outsourcing medical billing will prove extremely beneficial for the healthcare facilities as their staff can be used for other suitable jobs. It will save a lot of your time and boost your productivity at work. Besides, a typical medical billing company will be armed with incumbent tools that will help them complete the work efficiently and quickly.

5. Protect your patient’s data

With a third-party, expert medical billing company, your patient’s data will be protected. They will have tech-savvy professionals who could secure your patient’s sensitive data from cyber-attacks. From performing regular checks to updating the security patches, the team will ensure they are on top of the security with your healthcare’s data.

6. Minimal costs to ensure normal billing activity

The procedures your medical practice employs to print out and mail bills,monitor the payments and non-payments are laborious and time-consuming. Outsourcing this work to the medical billing company will reduce the costs. Spending relatively little money on overseeing payments from the service time to set reminders to finally getting reimbursed means you can assign your staff to higher priority work.

7. Stay compliant with evolving regulations

As we have mentioned already, the government protocols in the healthcare industry are ever-changing, and it makes the medical billing complex to keep up with. There are always new protocols and updates in the medicare industry.

The process requires an expert to keep track of the changes, what they mean, what services they will cover, etc. A dedicated medical billing professional whose job is to be cognizant of this information will know the upper hand details and make it easy for your patients. It will help them make sure that they are submitting clear and updated claims..

8. Control and transparency

It is a fallacy circling around that outsourcing medical billing means surrendering your control over the business, precisely medical billing. And we call it a complete nuisance. Once you sign a contract with an outsourcing vendor, they become obliged to help you with details anytime you need and to meet all the defined metrics. They must provide you data from time to time, provide answers for the outcomes, ensure transparency in the overall process, and work towards meeting the purpose defined in the contract.

Reputable medical billing companies like Velan have been serving healthcare providers for more than a decade, and we understand what it takes to be a highly trustworthy vendor to our clients. We provide detailed performance reports in a timely manner, keep you informed about what is happening with your business, give you prompt updates about your patient’s claim statuses, and inform you of delays and payment issues if any. It means our clients will hold complete control of their revenue cycle management without the need to micromanage or control any billing staff.

9. Easy integration with your EHR

Before that, what is EHR?

EHR stands for electronic health records. It is a digital format of a patient’s health chart. From the patient’s medical history to current health problems, and diagnosis, an EHR is a complete warehouse of information about a patient.

If you are handling your medical billing in-house, you would understand that managing various EHR systems is really strenuous and devouring a lot of time. Medical practices are hesitant to outsource fearing that their vendors might not be able to easily integrate with their EHS and would ask them to replace with their recommended software.

10. Scale your business’s growth

When healthcare businesses are not bogged down with medical billing complexities and have time to work on their everyday tasks, there is a huge opportunity to scale their business. By outsourcing medical billing and coding, you are eliminating distractions, noise, interruptions, and complications that would otherwise hamper your routine at work.

11. Keep your customers happy

Customer satisfaction is the key that makes or breaks any business, and medical practice is no exception. Every medical office aims to deliver great customer care and better service. Juggling between multiple things could put your customer satisfaction on the back seat, which could become apocalyptic later.

By outsourcing medical billing services, you are liberating your staff to do what they are best at – running scheduled tasks, executing patient check-in and check-out processes, maintaining the books, and handling clinical concerns.