Why Invest in a Professional Medical Billing Service?

Are you considering eliminating your in-house medical billing? Not sure what the benefits may be? If you should choose to outsource your medical billing, you will no longer have the headaches associated with in-house billing. Let’s take a look at what your practice stands to gain by investing in a professional medical billing service.

Allocating Staff Where They’re Best Neededoutsource medical billing

It will no longer be necessary to ensure that your staff is “up to date” on all of the medical billing standards, thus allowing you to save money by eliminating the need to send your employees to countless seminars. Additionally, you will save a significant amount of money when you’re no longer forced to purchase costly computer equipment and/or software updates – you will even save money on office expenses, such as phone charges, postage fees and copy paper.

Quite possibly one of the most beneficial factors involved in the decision to eliminate your in-house medical billing is the increased time and effort your staff will be able to put toward patient care. You may even cut expenses on employee wages and benefits, and at the same time enjoy the advantages gained from additional space within your office that will very likely become available.

Drastically Optimize Accounts Receivables

It has been reported that medical practices hiring competent and professional outside medical billing companies have gained the assurance that their receivables are getting the attention they deserve. Your A/R will receive full-time, professional attention, and absolutely no delay or interruption in cash flow due to vacation time and absenteeism.

Submission of electronic claims is also beneficial, since payments are typically received as soon as 10 days after submission. This has resulted in many practices witnessing a significant increase in their turnaround time and receivables. For smaller health centers and local FQHCs, these solutions can drastically help to maximize revenue.

Leverage Full-Service Practice Management

billing serviceAlso, most professional and competent medical billing companies encourage their clients to decide just how much or how little they do for you. You may request that the company with which you contract simply submit your claims, submit claims and work rejections, or offer you full practice management.

When it comes to comprehensive medical billing services, full practice management entails claim submission, as well as submission of all secondary and tertiary claims, posting of all payments, work rejections, necessary tasks to clear up old A/R reports, and weekly/monthly reports. Additionally, under a full practice management contract, medical billing companies send patient statements and handle patient billing calls.

Take Advantage of Value-Added Services

Many medical billing companies also offer such services as credentialing with insurance companies, thus saving their clients hours of paperwork processing. The company you decide to hire may also provide you the valuable service of performing the evaluation of reimbursement rates and advise you of the highest appropriate fee schedule, as well as supply your office with a customized super-bill (i.e., router, flow sheet).

In summary, hiring a professional medical billing service for your practice is extremely beneficial, and certainly an option you should consider. Prior to doing so, however, it’s important to talk with at least three reputable medical billing companies to ensure that the service with which you contract is reliable, competent and professional so that your practice sees the best results possible. I wish you the best for your practice’s success.

3 Reputable FQHC Billing Companies Based in the U.S.

Federal Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) offer healthcare services to citizens of the United States. Due to the dynamic and varied nature of services offered, it is normally hard for these kinds of facilities to undertake their own medical billing. More often than not, FQHCs and other such facilities like Community Health Centers hire reputable medical billing companies to offer billing services to them.

In order to continue providing quality health care services, it is important that FQHCs have efficient and effective medical billing systems that ensure patients complete medical bills in a timely manner. That can only happen with the intervention of reputable FQHC billing companies. Herein is a review of three leading FQHC billing companies based in the U.S.

1. Practice Managementreputable FQHC billing companies

Practice Management has a reputation for being one of the most trusted FQHC billing companies when it comes to decreasing payment turnaround time and revenue maximization. Although they provide a wide range of services, Practice Management has a high level of experience and specialty in FQHC billing. Some of the FQHC billing services provided by Practice Management include but are not limited to the following:

  • Community Health Center (CHC) billing and coding
  • FQHC billing services
  • Medicaid, Medicare and Commercial insurance for behavioral health, medical and dental claims.
  • EMR Practice Management Systems
  • Family practices
  • Pediatrics
  • Cardiology

Practice Management has a well put together team of individuals with enviable mastery of billing software, who are always ready for consultation on various topics such as:

  • FQHC Billing & Coding
  • Financial policies and procedures
  • Front office procedures

2. Visualutions

Visualutions is a top 3 FQHC billing company based in the United States. Visualutions is not only focused on providing the usual FQHC billing services but also ensures health centers significantly reduce overhead costs while maximizing on revenue.

It is noteworthy that this company ensures that their staffs are trained both practically and theoretically to ensure that they deliver on their mandate. Based on the best practice of FQHC billing, some of the services offered by the company include:

  • Financial analytics
  • Revenue cycle management
  • Community healthcare solutions
  • Cloud and IT services

3. Synergy Billing

Synergy Billing has over the years helped FQHCs to collect revenue and overcome financial huddles. Synergy recognizes the complex nature of FQHC billing and provides effective solutions to ensure every penny is not only collected, but also put into good use. Some of the programs that Synergy billing extends to FQHC include:

  • Retirement plans
  • Incentive programs
  • Employee Council
  • Synergy leadership academy.

To ensure effective service delivery, Synergy billing uses strategies such as:

  • Staff training: which is geared towards cultivating an understanding among the staff on how FQHC billing works
  • Accounting receivables recoveries are undertaken to establish error that may give rise to A/R balances
  • Informational webinars ensure that management and staff conform to the favorable billing practices to increase collection of revenue

For the most part, the top FQHC billing companies do a lot to help community based health centers keep afloat in the already turbulent waters of providing healthcare and medical treatment to an underserved population. It is therefore important to give due credit to these top three organizations for the effort they put forth to ensure citizens of the United States have access to quality medical and healthcare services.

Proven Medical Billing Strategies for FQHCs & Community Health Centers

Replying to bills is often something that people would much rather ignore than get on with, especially in times where the economy isn’t at its peak. This can make life very hard for the likes of medical billing agencies that rely on people paying their bills. In fact, research has found that almost a third of the claims which are sent out to people remain unanswered!FQHC health center biller

As you might imagine this is definitely a challenging prospect for the likes of cardiologists, especially on top of a hectic work schedule. It forces them to improve their systems and effectiveness when it comes to getting the money that is owed. But just how can you go about this if you are a health center or FQHCs? Below we have outlined proven ways to ensure you are cultivating the best FQHC billing strategies that are most aligned with your health center’s goals and objectives.

Make The Most Of Technology

The development of computers and the Internet have made maintaining records a lot simpler than they used to be. What this means is that FQHC billing and keeping profiles up-to-date and in order is a lot more efficient and accurate.

What this means for FQHC and health center billing agencies is that they are able to have a better understanding of whether claims will be accepted or denied. Software has now been designed that updates itself automatically and allows billing professionals to know exactly what they can collect from clients.

Submit Multiple Claims patient billing claims

Research has found that 60% of first time payments are either ‘lost’, ignored or denied. With these lost claims largely never being followed up on, as you might imagine this accounts for a lot of loss and it is a missed-opportunity for medical billing companies.

So how do you combat this? Well one of the simplest ways to combat this is to send out follow-up messages and resubmit any claims that are denied. The result is that even if only a few of these claims are answered then you will boost your returns.

Establish Clear Patient Communications

Clarity is key when it comes to patient billing information. If you remove the excuses of patients that they weren’t aware of the terms of payment then there is really no excuse for them to pay. So how do you go about this?

One of the simplest health center billing and FQHC medical billing solutions is to make sure the information is readily available for everyone to see and in terms of being in a medical practice this is usually by placing it in the waiting areas and at the reception. This information should provide the patients with a clear picture of any payments they may be required to make, the necessary insurance requirements they must have and how to best pay the bills.

Consistently Update Information

A lot of opportunity is lost from the lack of updated information! To ensure your billing process is successful it is integral that it keeps all information up to date.

By doing this you will be ensuring that everything is running correctly and smoothly from your end and therefore the fault is at the other end. It might sound obvious but an up-to-date listing will make it much easier to claim all the bills that are owed.