Medical Billing – Comparing Both Sides of the Coin

While discussing the matter of medical billing in regards to any clinical practice, generally you come across two distinct opinions. Firstly, there are those who believe that the responsibility of maintaining financial workflows of a practice lies with the clinician, alongside managing other administrative and clinical aspects of the practice. On the contrary, there are physicians who believe in providing uncompromising patient care, which is why they prefer outsourcing their medical billing to an expert organization. It’s difficult to establish which option is better since both arguments have their inherent pros and cons. Let’s try to determine which option is a more viable strategy to implement within your practice.

The foremost argument for advocates of accommodating an in-house medical billing department is ‘why pay someone for a job that you can do on your own?’ One may regard this as a valid consideration due to the expense incurred by hiring an expert medical billing service. Everybody dislikes money going out of their pocket without an advantageous trade off; so the million dollar question arises, what gains are acquired from the transaction considering option number two?

Surveys and polls have elucidated that overall efficiency of a practice including the clinicians’ productivity have substantially increased once the billing processes have been outsourced to a specialized medical billing service.  The fundamental reasons for this phenomenon as cited by these surveys are improved revenue cycles and efficient claim management. A diminished number of rejected claims inevitably results in greater earnings for the practice.

“It’s a mystery why some physicians still opt to have in-house billing. This appears even more ludicrous viewing the exceptional positive impact that outsourcing to a medical billing service has on your practice’s finances. For those who consider their practice to be primarily a business, the argument of saving money by having in-house billing is flawed in my opinion. In comparison you spend more money in hiring trained professionals, or hiring novices and training them. Moreover, training your supplementary resources to perform these functions consumes valuable time. Your revenue cycles are unnecessarily extended and you do not have the resources at your disposal to process the maximum number of claims possible”, according to an Ohio based health IT consultant.

If you inspect closely whilst making a comparison, eventually both time and money are conserved if you outsource your medical billing to an expert and proficient medical billing service. Since a much larger number of claims are being processed, even a small percentage paid to a third party billing company eventually translates into a greater profit for your practice. Furthermore, since all financial responsibilities and intrinsic concerns are outsourced, it gives the physician more time on their hands to focus on their primary responsibility of ensuring delivery of quality care.  When all is said and done, the number of clinicians outsourcing their medical billing speaks volumes for its benefits. Specialist medical billing services are making a huge statement through their performance and paving the way for the future of healthcare industry at large.