Outsourced Medical Billing – The Top 5 Advantages for Healthcare Providers
If you don’t send patients their bills in a timely manner, your account receivables will suffer and your collection rates will be very low. It may be time for outsourced medical billing.
Should billing be done in-house or outsourced to a direct billing company? There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Third party billing comes with many advantages. Medical organizations and businesses need cost-effective and efficient ways to collect their hard-earned revenue. Businesses can either outsource medical billing or hire qualified employees to do it in-house.
Take a look at our blog on the 5 Key Considerations When Choosing a Third-Party Medical Marketing Partner.
Here are the top five advantages of outsourced medical billing:
1. Outsourcing Can Save a Company Money. When billing is outsourced, a company saves money on monthly salaries and benefits for those who would do in-house billing. Flat rates charged by billing companies are generally less than what it would cost to staff an employee to do the same job. Companies who outsource also do not have to purchase or maintain billing software and computer equipment.
2. Outsourcing Helps a Company Collect More Money and Improves Cash Flow. Billing duties can be slowed and lost in the shuffle of running a business, but billing companies keep billing moving in an efficient way to get money to the medical organization faster. Ultimately, the timely submission of bills increases the influx of cash.
3. Billing Professionals Are Less Likely to Make Errors. Because billing companies have the sole purpose of getting billing correct, they are less likely to make errors. Billing companies are equipped with the knowledge and equipment to ensure that claims and bills are submitted in a thorough, speedy process. This reduces the amount of denied or rejected claims.
4. Companies/Organizations Can Focus More on Their Patients Leading to Higher Customer Satisfaction. Especially for small medical businesses who cannot hire people to do billing, using front office staff to split their time and efforts between billing and other duties can detract from other areas of their job. Outsourced medical billing improves the office staff’s productivity and can ultimately lead to better customer satisfaction.
5. Adding Advertising Messages to Your Bills Can Encourage Patients to Return and Increase Revenue. When advertising messages are added to bills, using variable data, it is called transpromo marketing. Transpromo marketing is effective because unlike junk mail, people open bills and read them. Medical businesses and organizations can advertise events, vaccines, reminders for preventative treatments or any other relevant messages on bills. Is it flu season? A practice may want to promote coming in for flu shots. Is there a health fair? Advertising on a bill is a good way to get existing customers to be in the knowhow and return to the business.
Whether outsourced medical billing or not depends on multiple factors. Businesses should look at the number of employees, finances, the age of the business and the local labor market. Outsourcing billing can save healthcare businesses and organizations time and money, giving the organization the ability to focus on primary tasks.
Choosing the Right Outsourced Medical Billing Provider
When choosing an outsourced medical billing provider for your organization’s communications, there’s much to consider. Not all print providers have the expertise or equipment to handle the security and volume demands of medical billing.
Below are some key characteristics to look for in your third party provider:
- Ability to handle a wide array of variable data printing applications
- Flexibility in how they can receive your data
- Experience with billing and postage
- Compliance with HITRUST and HIPAA
- Advanced printing technology to ensure the utmost accuracy and print quality
- Services beyond printing
A medical billing services provider should have all of the technology and measures in place to ensure that your customer data stays safe at all times. For optimal value, also consider if a vendor has the versatility to handle your organization’s diverse needs.
Preferred Direct has years of experience and a stellar reputation in managing variable data and sensitive information to generate invoices and other medical notices, accurately and securely. We guarantee prompt and confidential processing of your information while giving you flexible solutions to accommodate your unique requirements. We can replicate your existing invoice format, give you templates to choose from, or create a custom design to fulfill your vision. You’ll also have several options for submitting your data to us—via our secure FTP site in .xls, .txt, .csv, or .dat formats or send .pgp encrypted files. We can handle printing, folding, inserting, presorting (for postal discounts), and delivering your invoices to the U.S. Post Office.
When you partner with Preferred Direct, you partner with a data-secure, technology-focused outsourced medical billing provider, dedicated to your goals. Contact us today for an estimate!
Call Preferred Direct toll-free today. 1-833-425-7007
Sources: medicaloffice.about.com, poweryourpractice.com, itservicereviews.com
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