Outsourcing Medical Billing Services? Ask Them a Few Questions First

For doctors, clinicians, and other healthcare service providers, the choice to avail of outsourcing medical billing services is based on the cost and revenue cycle management. You can’t trust an unprofessional medical billing company that doesn’t have a good reputation or practices to support its claims.

Many options are available to you. And you must have some doubts, but we are here to help you in this regard.

When you outsource billing, you have some expectations from the medical billing services in terms of collection rate.

Are you also worried about the whole hiring process?

It is tough, of course. But, it can be easy when you know how to deal with the professionals.

Before all this, you need to keep the following questions in your mind.

Here are some questions which every healthcare provider needs to ask a medical billing company.

1. For how long they have been providing medical billing services to the hospitals
2. What price they are offering to provide the service?
3. Who is processing the billing information or compiling claims?
4. What sort of training does the medical billing services staff receive?
5. Are they following any plan to make sure of HIPAA compliance?
6. Are they certified by any professional organization?
7. Is there any guarantee of transparency?
8. How are the denied, and rejected claims handled by a medical billing company?
9. What are the reports you can be able to receive from them?
10. Are they quick to respond?

For how long they have been providing medical billing services to the hospitals

It is essential to know for how long an outsourcing medical billing company is in the industry.

• Are they working with the practices?
• Do they have any specialty-specific services?

What price they are offering to provide the service?

The most important question that always comes to every provider’s mind is what cost they are demanding.

The overall percentage must be equal to the flat rate because it mainly decreases when your collection increases. You must ask them about start-up fees, termination fees, and other hidden costs. Some medical billing services provider charges more for the patient collections along with a package including the follow-up services and AR management.

Who is processing the billing information or compiling claims?

• Who has access to the billing information?
• What are the measures taken to secure the data?
• Is there a dedicated resource responsible for the claim compilation or a team of medical billers and coders?
• Who is responsible dedicatedly to manage your practice?

Clinicians must know this information.

What sort of training does the medical billing services staff receive?

• Do they have the license?
• Are they trained frequently?
• Do they have the right training material and resources (CPT, HCPCS, etc.)

Are they following any plan to make sure of  HIPAA compliance?

• Is the medical billing company HIPAA compliant?
• What security measures they are providing?
• Is it easy for you to meet the people in your account via phone or in-person?

Are they certified by any professional organization?

• Are the company and its employees certified by any professional organizations such as HBMA?
• Or if the billing service is associated with an authorized institute?

Is there any guarantee of transparency?

• Is there any proof of the transparency of the whole medical billing process?
• Can the outsourcing medical billing company ensures that there would be no illegal activity involved?

How are the denied, and rejected claims handled by a medical billing company?

• Is the medical billing company experienced enough to see your rejected and denied claims?
• Do they have a sufficient team to timely clear all of your claims?

What are the reports you can be able to receive from them?

You must receive timely reports about the collection’s account receivables, and rejected claims.

• Is the interviewee’s medical billing company able to provide that?

Are they quick to respond?

• How quickly will you receive the reports on the financial status of your medical practice?
• Moreover, how often will they contact you?

Conclusion

The above is the questionnaire sheet that every healthcare provider looking to outsource RCM need to ask about medical billing services before hiring them. After asking these questions, it will be more feasible for them to trust the billing company.