How to Interview and Hire a Billing Service

There are many reasons why medical practices hire an outside billing service – lower costs and higher expertise leading to increased collections; executive-level reporting;  less personnel management;  permit the practice to focus on patient care rather than medical billing.  

If your practice is thinking about these issues, below is a short practical guide to interviewing and selecting an outside billing service.

 

  1. Find 3-4 potential billing companies:

  • Referrals from other doctors who are using a billing service

  • What do they like and dislike about their current service?

  • Google Search

  • LinkedIn Search

 

  1. Conduct an interview with their principal – face-to-face if feasible, or by telephone if not

  • Most important issue: Determine if they have a strong and established process for managing the billing cycle

  • Acquisition and organization of information from the medical office

  • Follow-up on unpaid claims

  • Patient billing and interactions

  • Clear, concise, informative reports

    • Collections/Month

    • “Month over month” and “year over year” comparisons

    • Accounts receivables

    • Coding utilization

  • Quality control

  • How do they find and fix small billing problems before they become BIG billing problems?

 

  1. Other Interview Questions and Issues:

  • Will you interact with the company principal or with an account manager?

    • Account managers generally have less authority to resolve problems, less incentive to ensure clients’ long-term satisfaction, and have higher turn-over rates

  • What is the experience level and background of the company’s executive(s) and staff?

  • How do they manage HIPAA compliance?

  • Encrypted email system

  • Encryption on file transfers

  • VPN access to remote terminals

  • Discuss any specific issues that are concerns for you and how they would address them.

 

  1. Get a demonstration of their billing software.

  • How easily can your front desk determine outstanding patient balances?

  • How easily can you track financial performance?

  • Is it web-based and accessible from anywhere? Or does it require special access software?

  • Does it include or integrate with an EHR? If not, how will they integrate with your EHR (if you have one)?

 

  1. What are their fees?

  • Percentage of collections vs. hourly fees

  • Set-up costs

  • Software costs

 

  1. If they charge a percentage of collections:

  • Rates vary depending on practice size and specialty

  • For most practices, reasonable rates generally range from 5% to 8%

  • Rates lower than that require short-cuts on quality

  • Rates higher than that reflect inefficiencies in the billing process

 

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/

Mike Moll