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How Much Is Your In-House Medical Billing Costing You?

April 14, 2015

Medical_Billing_outsourcing-1Contracting an outside company to do your billing may seem expensive at first thought, but have you actually ever really looked into how much your current in-house medical billing is costing you? When you take a closer look at both the hard and soft expenses of keep your billing in-house, you may change your mind. You just might decide that it is both easier and cheaper to let professionals solve your medical billing problems.

Hard Expenses

First, there are the benefits and pay of the person doing the billing. If your practice is small, you may argue that you would be paying that same person anyway to greet patients from the reception desk, answer phones, and care for patients, but the time they’re spending on billing still has a distinct value. Those hours spent on billing could be hours you don’t have to pay. You might be able to reduce your staff if they’re not also doing the billing or reduce the hours of each person, potentially avoiding the expense of benefits. There is also the supervisor of the person doing the billing, whether this is the salary of an office manager or your own time spent supervising instead of seeing patients to earn more money.

Technology is the second biggest hard expense of in-house medical billing. You have to purchase and maintain a computer for the billing person. That includes all software on that computer, whether it is just additional licenses of the software you are using in other parts of the office or software specifically for billing on that purpose. Don’t forget to add in the expenses of your virus protection program and technical support, which are often based on the number of computers in the office. Getting rid of that billing computer could save you money. Along with the computer is the printer and ink, paper, forms, and reference books needed to do accurate billing. Those reference books quickly become a library as you purchase all of the newest updates that you need for billing accuracy.

Soft Expenses

Is the person doing your in-house billing a certified professional coder? Do they take regular continuing education to make sure they’re on top of the newest billing practices? If both of those things aren’t true, they could be failing to add modifiers that could earn you a higher payment for the procedure. Do they have enough knowledge of how medical treatments work and what should be grouped together to ask the important questions when information seems to be missing? An example of this would be when the billing person sees an office visit for pain and possible fracture and asks whether there was an x-ray done that should be billed to the insurance. Or when they see a diagnosis that they know from experience needed lab work to prove but don’t see any sign of you billing for the lab work. It’s important to capture all of those things so you’re not giving out procedures for free. Trained professional coders who see hundreds of claims know what procedures usually go with a diagnosis, and when they don’t see them, they know to ask the questions that could result in increased revenue. How many of these small procedures does your current medical billing person miss? 

When the employee doing the billing is sick or on vacation, the billing gets delayed.  If an employee has a long term health crisis or just quits, your billing doesn’t get done for however long it takes to find another person capable of doing it, and this costs you money. The delay in your billing causes a delay in the insurances’ payments to you, which could leave you late paying other bills or needing to make hard choices when your company bank account is low. When you outsource to a company who has many billing professionals, they handle the staffing problems, and there’s always someone to do your work in a timely manner.

 

Now that you’ve taken a closer look at the real costs of doing your medical billing in house, you can always contact us to discuss the money you could save by switching to M-Scribe’s qualified professionals for your medical billing needs. When you outsource your medical billing to a dedicated company, all of those expenses that may be eating up 20-30% of your revenue are gone, replaced by much smaller fees and the peace of mind that the billing company has all of the technology and knowledge needed to maximize your revenue.

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