How Outsourcing Your Billing Benefits Your Practice

In order to be successful, not only must healthcare providers deliver excellent services, they must also be sure their back-end processes function properly. Healthcare policy and legislation is dynamic, and it can be a challenge to stay current. Expertise must be applied to medical billing and coding because errors may cause significant losses. This is why many providers outsource their medical billing and coding to a third-party service provider.

Here are 8 benefits to outsourcing that should be considered:

1. Reduce administrative duties – Outsourcing allows you to allocate your financial and human resources more efficiently. Your staff can spend less time staying up to date on medical coding changes, compliance, and legislation. In addition, your staff will spend less time preparing claims for submission.
2. Significantly reduce billing and coding errors – Billing and coding companies scrub claims and look for simple errors that may slow down payments. Medical billing software ensures there are fewer coding errors, transposed numbers, or incorrect information in the claims before submitting to the insurance carrier.
3. HIPAA-compliant security measures – Billing and coding companies have a responsibility to protect all patient information. It is expensive for your practice to maintain a rigorous IT system to protect privileged information. The billing and coding companies invest in these systems to ensure the possibility of a data breach is minimal.
4. ICD-10 adherence – The ICD-10 has a significant effect on payment outcomes for providers. There are constant changes to the US healthcare industry regulations, and billing and coding companies stay up to date on these changes.
5. Highly skilled, trained and certified personnel – a dedicated team of specialists are trained and certified and must adhere to stringent standards and continuing education requirements.
6. Meaningful data – anytime technology is used to automate healthcare processes, data is generated. This data empowers administrators to make wiser financial decisions.
7. Increased control – having an outsourced partner taking care of medical billing coding is a smart and strategic delegation of tasks, ensuring no other operational areas will be overlooked.
8. Improved patient engagement and satisfaction rates – With more time to spend with patients, staff and physicians can ensure a higher quality of care.

Finding places to reduce operating expenses and increase revenue make sense in our constantly changing healthcare environment. Outsourcing your medical billing and coding allows you to save time and money in the long run.