EMR-SOFTWARE BILLING PROGRAM VS A PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL BILLING COMPANY. WHICH ONE YOU WANT? CHOSE WISELY!
Medical practitioners out there that accept insurance payments in their practice face the dilemma of choosing a method for billing for the work they do as efficiently and as effortlessly as possible, with the least disruption and the least burden to the doctor and to the office staff. Let’s dig in.
You basically have two choices to consider which are: 1. An EMR-Software billing program and 2. A Professional Medical Billing Company. For the uninformed this is a difficult decision to make and not always do you get the full story from the companies that market these products/services.
Billing for medical services has become very complicated since many factors and expertise are needed, and additionally not all insurance companies have the same rules. Also, there are constant government change and new regulations. This makes it very difficult for non-professional billers to carry out this job in an efficient manner without denials and delays of payments and your cashflow dropping. Remember the average turnaround time for a claim submitted correctly to be paid for both primary and secondary insurance from the day you saw the patient is about 3 weeks for the primary insurance and another four weeks for the secondary insurance. So that is about seven weeks for you to get your hard-earned money. With any claims submitted incorrectly there is a denial and the process starts all over again.
The sales force of the EMR-Software billing companies are banking on you wanting to use their EMR for your medical record keeping, to which now most have attached a billing software to it, so your doctor and staff can do both your patient record keeping and the billing from the same platform. Sound good but watch out. They make you believe they are giving you the EMR but they really charge you for both the EMR and also a percentage for the billing. They make it sound cheap but is not and most importantly they don’t do the work. Here is the catch, your staff does all the billing work using the billing software and not them. In fact you may even have to hire additional personnel to do it. By going with this option, you have just dumped a pile of work onto your office staff. And since your staff has no expertise in medical billing, the mistakes leading to denials will pile up and your cash flow will take a steep dive. Keep your eyes and ears wide open when they are selling this animal!.
If you chose the option of the professional medical billing company, they will be there to serve you and your staff and not to dump unexpected work on you. Beside if you are already used to using the portions of whatever EMR you have and are familiar with why change it? For your medical record keeping, you can continue to use it and the professional medical billing company will work around it without you changing your routine or burdening you or your staff. Remember also that some of these professional billing companies have resources available and they can offer you at no additional charge, in-service for you and your staff, help you with contract negotiations, attorney referrals, computer networking referrals, etc.
0 Comments