It is not easy to pick a provider. But being aware of the best questions can help you make the right choice. Below are actually three things to seek when deciding on healthcare billing services and the inquiries you ought to ask to identify if they fill the bill.

Don’t choose a Service based solely on price.
A full-service medical billing business with experienced billers and sophisticated technology for revenue cycle is able to command an extra charge for their services since their collections tend to be noticeably more. If you’re very concerned about cost, you should not assume that you’ll be able to get a better deal from a discounted or commoditized vendor. It’s possible to have less revenues.

For instance, some large well known national services advertise rates of 2.9 percent of the revenue they collect with 94% first-pass claim acceptance levels, however that discount rate is subject to the expense of follow-up on your insurance claim. If there’s no follow-up, there is around $1,400-1,800 monthly in non-paid insurance claims. Their low-cost offer suddenly doesn’t look like so amazing of a bargain.

Do not underestimate the importance of technology.
Brown-Wilson’s 2014 Black Book Survey of 21,079 PM and EHR users using 455 different software, reveals that 90% of physicians have decided to only look at the use of an EHR focused software platform, believing that the seamless integration of EHR/PM/RCM technology will increase the efficiency of their practice and financial success. 82% of independent physicians surveyed stated that they plan to integrate billing, practice management and EHR software in one provider solution by January 2016.

This is a significant change in perception, as only a small percentage of practices today utilize a unified, end-to-end PM/EHR software - and the patient population using them is heavily weighted towards large medical practices that have more than 25 doctors.

There’s a huge distinction between companies that bill the traditional way (manual data entry, the fax) and those using cloud-based revenue cycle management software. It’s similar to personal banking. There are people who still accumulate the piles of bills they have printed, write each payee an individual check, send itand then manually add it to their account. Others pay their bills online with just a click of a mouse without paper work or delay.
Your office can connect to the remote billing office seamlessly using the appropriate software. This simplifies workflow and reduces errors. The eligibility of patients is checked before they are taken in for a visit. Coders have immediate access to and control over patient information, insurance data and notes from the clinic. Denials are dealt with quickly, rather than sitting on the to-do list of a person’s. Cloud-based systems automatically comply with the majority of HIPAA storage requirement.

Do not settle for anything less than absolute honesty.
In the past, one of the biggest negatives of outsourcing billing to a third-party was the loss in the financial information required to manage your practice. To determine the health of your finances and status of your practice, you could only rely on the reports your biller had provided. Practice Management was required to be performed forensically because the reports were old documents at the time they were received, making them ineffective for making real-time adjustments or proactive decision making.

Furthermore In the event that CMS or some other payor suddenly decided that they needed an updated report to reimburse then you were at the mercy of the software provider of the billing service. They would then create a custom report and was typically not on time. However, healthcare billing companies that use today’s cloud-based systems are completely different. You’ll have 24/7 access to any claim in the queue and any data item you require.

An example of reports you may require from your biller are reconciliation reports showing charges, payments, write-offs adjustment open charges, unapplied payments, and posted payments divided by user, provider legal entity, location and the payer. You may also want a report of unbilled superbills, superbills on hold, flagged superbills, and charges held.