The Key to Practice Profitability
As a healthcare provider, your first priority is to provide outstanding patient care. That is the main reason you went into the medical field – to help others feel better. But, underlying that altruistic goal is the business side of your personality. With your education and experience, you are certainly entitled to be paid fairly for the services you provide. You also have to think about the costs involved in running a medical practice – the building, staff, insurance, and so much more – which means you have to stay on top of your medical billing procedures.
The medical billing department is the key to the continued profitability of any medical practice. Bills must be created on a timely basis, submitted properly to the various insurance companies and government entities, and followed-up regularly to ensure prompt payment is received. Solid billing practices lead to a better cash flow and improved Revenue Cycle Management, or RCM. You can continue to receive your salary, pay your office staff, and keep the practice running without worrying about money on a continuous basis.
The truth, however, is that medical billing is fraught with difficulty. From miscommunication and sloppy procedures to exasperating guidelines from each payer, billing errors can really add up. Healthcare Finance reports that billing errors can cost the healthcare industry billions in lost time and wasteful spending. A bill that is rejected due to an error requires twice the processing time for the same dollar result to the practice. Additional time can be lost on the telephone contacting the patient or the payer to settle the matter, often extending a rather routine claim time to a months-long struggle. Meanwhile, the current work load piles up and gets delayed as the billing department deals with the issue again.
The negatives for the industry and the practice are obvious, but that doesn’t even take into consideration the impact on the individual patient’s health and welfare. Billing errors lead to delayed payments from the insurance companies, denied claims, and increased stress at the very time a patient needs to be stress-free. It is hard for the medical team to provide the highest degree of care when a patient is upset due to a problem with his/her bill. If errors are consistent or costly, they may even lead to patients leaving the practice.
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