| Medical Billing: The Real Truth |
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A Frank Discussion About Medical Billing
A new era has arrived for the medical practioner - an era in which the only way you'll survive is to reduce your expenses!
Medical Providers fail to realize the true, HIGH cost associated with in-house billing.
The lack of this knowledge is a very costly form of neglect. Doctors are fooled into thinking in-house billing is cheaper, and they have more control. In fact, an in-house medical billing operation is an expensive proposition. Currently, the initial investment for hardware, software, and personnel is approaching up to $35,000 for a solo provider, plus annual software licensing that some companies charge as much as $7,000 to $10,000 per practice provider/physician.
In addition, there are the added costs of employee salaries to perform billing, plus worker's compensation, the cost of benefits, vacation time, postage, supplies and materials, and ongoing hardware and software upgrades.
Forget about "free" claim submission as well. In life, you get what you pay for. In order to comply with new laws and to preserve profits, many insurers are turning to new fees for claim submission, and these have already begun to be passed onto practices. As a result, clearinghouses are becoming a necessity, and this is just one more added expense. It's salary + employer costs + supplies + equipment and software maintenance and upgrades + claim fees +++++, and on go the costs.
Most practitioners haven't even factored in the cost of the extra space they rent or set aside to house their in-house billing operation. This is space that could be used for patient care, and added patient care means revenue growth.
Also, by maintaining an in-house billing operation, practices mistakenly believe that billing is done accurately and efficiently and that the practice retains greater control over the procedures.
Are you better off spending all of this money on your in-house billing operation OR would you rather cut these costs by 50% to 70%, take the savings and hire a Nurse Practitioner and BOOST your income?
Let's examine each of these assumptions:
Control.
- Many providers are reluctant to let a third party assume responsibility for their billing. They think they will lose control of their receivables. The truth is most practitioners have already lost control. With the bureaucratic intricacies of their contracts with insurers with co-pays, write-offs, chargebacks, deductibles, holdbacks, and duplicate payments, who really has control?
Speed.
- Practitioners instinctively fear that using an outside biller will slow down the billing process. Untrue. Working with us, within 24 hours of receipt of a claim, it's in the hands of the insurer for processing and payment.
- The insurance company has your claims, and if it doesn't, we know exactly why, and the why it doesn't. We correct technical errors immediately and we don't have to wait weeks for rejections!
- With us, gross billings increase and accounts receivable time is shortened because we are paid on an incentive basis.
- An in-house staff paid on a salary does not have the level motivation of a good billing service.
Efficiency.
- Because we deal with many different specialties, we are more familiar with coding than any in-house billing staff. We are aware of the latest trends in coding, and we are aware of any issues that an insurer may be having with its systems. An in-house billing staff may eventually catch up on issues or problems, but it could take your staff weeks to catch up to billing trends that we are already aware of.
- Also, by the nature of our business, we have more sophisticated hardware and softare than they typical physician's office because the higher volume of transactions we handle necessitates this fact. The systems used in medical billing must be constantly updated. These are costs we absorb, and they are not passed on to our clients. A practice can literally break its budget trying to keep up with systems and training.
Cost.
- Some practitioners think that using us is more costly than doing the work in-house. This depends on what you include in the term 'cost.'
- A practice's true billing cost includes payroll, payroll taxes including Social Security, federal, state, unemployment, and even local taxes, fringe benefits including pension and profit sharing, medical and dental insurance, disability insurance, training and education costs, sick pay, and personal time. Additionally, the cost of the billing office's space, hardware costs, software costs, maintenance, utilities, office supplies, and POSTAGE.
Postage is an expense, which is commonly overlooked. Plus, there's the time that your staff isn't doing data entry for billing because they're dealing directly with patients who phone your office to question or challenge bills they receive. These are expenses that reduce your bottomline. Finally, when you have someone performing an in-house function, that person needs supervision. If you hire an office manager to supervise
your billing staff you must also monitor your office manager. This takes away from your patient time, and you don't get paid for overseeing your office, you get paid for caring for patients.
A Bad Economy.
- When times get tough, people get laid off and lose their insurance. People who still do have insurance and would willingly see their physician for a minor medical problem stay home and save their co-payments and deductibles for other expenses. Your revenue takes a dip, but your expenses don't. You still have to maintain and pay the overhead associated with your in-house billing operation.
By using us, when your income takes a dip to economic uncertainty or due to cuts in reimbursement levels by Medicare or other insurers, your billing costs go down proportionately.
- Despite such a significant investment in equipment, software, and personnel, a physician can suddenly discover that his in-house billing isn't working. Hopefully, this discovery doesn't come too late.
Outsourcing Your Medical Billing
In reality, using a medical billing company like Berkshire Group Services Inc. is not only more cost effective than billing in-house, but it's faster, with higher reimbursements, and offers better control due to valuable and useful Practice Management Reports.
Some medical billing companies charge a set-up fee which can be significant. Other companies install software in your computer that has your staff entering data, which in fact is the largess of the billing process. Our competition charge from 7% to nearly 13%, and some add to these fees the cost of phone use, fax lines, materials, reports, statements, envelopes, or postage - all of these are add-ons to the percentage charged, raising the true cost.
This is where Berkshire Group Services Inc. is different. We take a flat rate approach that has no hidden costs, everything - even custom reports - is included in the one low monthly fee. A fee so low, that you will see an immediate improvement in your income from the reduced overhead alone, and it's a fee that you can lock in for as long as you choose with no surprise increases.
One Practice's savings were so significant that the savings paid the FULL $26,000 annual salary of their receptionist!
Several other clients took advantage of the savings, and hired Nurse Practitioners thereby increasing their revenue through increased patient volume and better patient care!
Our entire staff is trained in your practice. Whether there's a sickness, a vacation, or any other problem that may develop, your practice billing, posting, reporting, and patient handling remain in place. Your insurance claims are in the hands of the correct payer (insurance company) in less than 8 hours from when we receive them. For some practices that send us claims immediately, payers have the claims the same day that the patient was seen. Fast and accurate!
Then, your practice receives accurate reporting that absolutely provides a road map as to where your practice is, where it's heading, and what can be done to reach your goals in the shortest possible time.
None of our competitors, and few inhouse medical billing departments have this response level.
If low-cost, better collections, less rejections, faster turnaround to payment, and better control is what your practice needs, then we are the business partner that you should consider as your one source for medical billing.
No one is better than us at improving your bottomline! No one!
How could your practice benefit from saving the thousands of dollars a year that you spend on in-house billing?
A Footnote: While we all like to think of ourselves as versatile in all that we do, truthfully we can't do it all. You don't buy a car, read the owner's manual, and suddenly become a master mechanic, fixing every problem that arises.
So, why do we think that there is some magical, mystical software program out there, wherein with a few taps on a keyboard, you can create the perfect medical record, and with just two more taps, the perfect claim is sent automatically to an insurer.
There is no such thing as a generic claim that a software program can create. FYI, each insurer has different requirements, and these different requirements CAN'T be set up with a software program. A human being with expertise in billing these specific insurers is needed to input the proper data fields for each insurer. The busier your practice, the more insurances you likely take. The more insurances you take, the more expert your biller has to be. The more expert your biller is, the higher your costs.
It's a vicious circle. Your best solution? Well, you're reading this, so you're already here.
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