When Should A Medical Practice Outsource Its Billing?

An outside billing service offers many advantages over in-house billing – improved collections, reduced costs, less management headaches. But that doesn’t mean external billing is always the right answer. Every practice, and every doctor, is unique, and platitudes about the universal benefits of external billing should never be enough to justify hiring a billing service.

But there are some common practice scenarios where outsourcing billing can provide an enormous amount of value:

Scenario #1:  Your practice is fairly new.

Setting up a new practice takes an astonishing amount of time, energy and focus. You’ll need to hire and train employees, develop procedures on everything from checking in patients to answering the phones, and get the word out that you’ve opened a new practice – and that’s before you’ve even started seeing patients.

In this case, devoting precious resources to internal billing will slow the growth of your practice and add hours of work to an already full schedule.

For a new practice, outsourcing your billing makes a lot of sense. External billing can ensure that your revenue flows while you focus on getting the practice up and running. And if you decide you’d prefer in-house billing, you can always build out an internal billing department once the practice has passed the start-up phase.

Key Benefit to External Billing: Free-up internal resources to allow for practice growth.

Scenario #2:  You’re having problems with your current billing situation.

Most practices encounter billing problems at some point – the billing software crashes and claims aren’t submitted; credentialing with a major carrier lapses and takes a long time to fix; a key employee is out of the office and billing tasks get missed. Collections decline, accounts receivable increase, and patients become frustrated as they try to resolve their accounts.

When a practice gets into this situation, it can be very hard to recover. Fixing the problem usually requires additional resources and expertise, and for most practices, that requires hiring additional employees at a significant cost.

But because a billing service handles many practices, a billing service can temporarily re-allocate other employees to assist with a temporary issue. This lets them fix problems and improve collections far more quickly than an internal billing office.

Key Benefit to External Billing: Fix problems faster and with less expense.

Scenario #3:  You don’t love managing employees.

Some people truly enjoy managing staff. They love the process of getting to know their employees – leveraging their strengths and helping them improve their weaknesses; providing frequent monitoring and feedback; mentoring and guiding to ensure their employees’ continued growth and happiness. They thrive on the ever-changing dynamics of inter-personnel relations and the inevitable personal dramas that arise in any busy office.

And some people don’t.

If you’re in this latter group, recognize and embrace that reality. Put your talents into areas you do love and at which you excel. And simplify your office dynamics by giving someone else responsibility for your billing staff. Your financial performance will improve, you’ll be able to focus on the work you love, and everyone in your practice will be happier.

Key Benefit to External Billing: Reduce management time; increase time spent on the work you love.

These are just a few scenarios where outsourcing billing can be valuable for a practice. If you’re thinking of using a billing company, take a few minutes to consider how outsourcing will improve your practice and your quality of life. If you’re not sure, talk to a few billing companies- any good billing company should be interested in learning your particular situation and desires and help you decide if they can help you reach those goals.

Rusty Wilson is the founder and principal of eMed Partners, a full-service medical billing company for physicians and medical practices.
For more about our billing services: http://emedpartners.com/
To follow Rusty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rusty-wilson-520206/