By: Christi Arnett
Outsourcing billing to a third party is a smart business strategy that can improve operations, but also comes with some stigma or fears over what it can be like to outsource that aspect of your practice. Whether it’s from a previous experience with outsourcing or hearing an experience from a peer, there are a handful of concerns we’ve heard that cause practices to be hesitant in outsourcing their billing. Today, we are here to debunk these common hesitations so you can feel confident in making the choice to outsource.
Myth #1: People will lose jobs
Eyecare practices often need vision and medical billers on staff. When you hire an outsourced partner, by extension they become a part of your team. This enables your in-house staff to focus more on revenue generating activities. Examples could include verifying vision benefits, assisting patients during the sales process, patient scheduling outreach, or ensuring that patients maximize their benefits. Helping patients fully understand their benefits enables more meaningful sales conversations. This is followed by accurately entering and fully utilizing benefits for the hardware order. Accurate invoice entry speeds up the order, accelerates payment, and creates a better customer experience, leading to patient trust.
Myth #2: It is a security risk
Many think outsourcing compromises patient data security and potential security breaches. In reality, established billing companies invest heavily in compliance and data protection. At a minimum, ensure your partner has a HIPAA Compliance program and their BAA states that you are a Covered Entity. This puts a burden for compliance on them, and holds them to a set of physical and electronic security standards. Additionally, how are they going to communicate with your practice? Having a secure platform to manage claims and payment questions is critical. Email is not a best practices method even if it is encrypted.
Myth #3: It only benefits a large company
We’ve heard from smaller practices that they believe they won’t benefit from outsourcing. There are many benefits for all sized practices. It boils down to the services provided must match your needs and budget. And, the typical pricing structure of outsourcing your billing is based on volume so your partner is only getting paid when you get paid.
Myth #4: It is too expensive
Having an expert billing company often leads to increased revenue, improvements in staff production, and savings in labor costs. The bottom line is the savings when you consider the money and time saved on collections and administration.
Myth #5: You’ll lose control
With a good company, you gain transparency, education, analytics, and speed of collections in the whole process. In many cases, you’ll uncover parts of the process that you might not have known were broken. The billing company can be a partner to your practice that allows you to focus on what is important.
Myth #6: Quality will suffer
There’s a concern that outsourced billing may not meet quality standards, but experienced billing companies possess specialized knowledge and technology that enhance accuracy and efficiency. Having a billing company also makes you less dependent on staff shortages or turnover. Billing expertise isn’t a skill that is often easy to find when you’re dealing with staff shortages.
Myth #7: Communication will be challenging
Some fear poor communication with an outsourced team. But, with a trusted and responsive partner you’ll have clear service level agreements, and defined processes and protocols with regular check-in meetings will foster strong results.
Myth #8: Billing will take longer
Outsourcing can actually get claims paid faster. Having a partner solely focused on your billing and collections, with a transparent process, will streamline processes to speed up payment and increase accountability.
Staffing problems continue to negatively affect many healthcare organizations. Outsourcing some or all of your billing processes can be a great way to improve operational efficiency and minimize the hassles around staffing. Allowing experts to assist with claims filing or payment posting can free up in-house staff to focus on other important tasks.
If you’re looking for a partner to help with claim filing in your practice, schedule time to talk with OMS and see how we can help take some of the stress off your practice and improve you cash flow.