The state of Pennsylvania is one of the richest economies in America, with a gross state product (GSP) of over $800 billion. Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate to everyone paying their bills, and if you are a small medical practice you are probably more aware than many of this.
This is one of the reasons why companies like Accumed Billing In Pennsylvania have seen increasing growth. Allowing smaller practices to have the same efficiency and access to cashflow that can be found in larger medical centers and hospitals is going to benefit the entire area, not simply the practice itself.
What Is A Medical Billing Service?
Generally medical practices are relying on health insurance companies to payout for a patient’s medical procedures. A Medical billing service is able to take care of this process, ensuring that all claims are submitted correctly, chasing up with the health insurance companies if payment hasn’t been received, and looking into other options if a payment for service has been declined by an insurance company.
In larger organizations this may be done by an entire billing team, while in medium sized medical practices there will often only be one person fulfilling the entire accounts receivable duties. However, in smaller medical services this is unfortunately an area that is simply added on to a general administration or accounts role.
Why Is Medical Billing Not An Admin Role?
Although the vast majority of medical receptionists, practice managers and medical administration staff are talented people who have a diverse range of skills, accounts receivable within the American healthcare system is a very specialist role. Beyond normal debt collection, invoicing and processing, the additional complication of dealing with health insurance companies, making sure that their processes have been correctly followed in order for the insurance company to payout on procedures can often involve in-depth knowledge of the insurance industry, not just generalist knowledge of accounts processes or medical centers.
We Can’t Afford A Dedicated Accounts Receivable Person
Pennsylvania is ranked as the 29th healthiest state in America, so pretty middle of the road. Part of its success is the high number of primary care physicians that people in the state have access to. Another reason is that the majority of people in Pennsylvania has medical insurance. https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/Overall/state/PA
However, high levels of pollution in the state mean correlate with the increased health issues that Pennsylvania’s have.
What this all means is that you have a large population with health insurance who also is likely to have ongoing illnesses caused by environmental conditions, asthma, heart conditions, sleeping issues, respiratory problems and so on. All of this is going to involve the complicated process of medical billing through the health insurance systems.
Although many small and medium sized medical practices feel that they do not yet have the financial turnover to pay for a permanent fulltime accounts’ receivable role, without someone managing this area efficiently your practice profit and income won’t reach anywhere near the full potential.
So, what many practices are doing is to outsource the role. With different fee structures your practice is able to ensure that your medical billing is done accurately, and on time, while you do not need to worry about staffing the role.
Outsourcing also means that you are working instantly with someone who is highly trained in the billing software that you use, so there is not the usual downtime most practices experience when they hire a new person into the role. There is no training period, and no learning curve.
If you outsource your medical billing to a reputable company you are also likely to be working with someone, or a team of people, who not only know the job, and how the system works, but probably have contacts within the insurance companies already (its complicated, see here), so if there is a problem know exactly who to call to have it resolved quickly.
We Don’t Have A Medical Billing System
For new medical centers one of the biggest bonuses to using a professional medical billing company is that they can help get you set up with software packages that will work for your center and help you learn to use it if needed.
Because the people employed by the company are used to working with a range of different systems they will be able to work on anything that you have, but they will also not have an agenda when they make a recommendation about what system might work best for you.
