Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Practice’s Billing Department

Audit Your Own Billing

Now that we’ve covered what billers do on a day-to-day basis, along with the benefits of switching to an outsourced billing department, and even how to transition from self-billing to a third party biller, we want you to ask yourself a few questions that can help you audit your practice’s billing department to gauge what may be lacking in terms of your own financials, especially compared to your peers:

• How much A/R is my practice still waiting to collect?
• How often are A/R collections attempted, and how successful are those attempts?
• How much revenue is my practice making in relation to my peers within the same specialty?
• What can I do to increase my revenues without increasing my practice workload?
• How many billers do I employ?
• If I had more billers, would that help, or should I consider other options?
• Are other tasks delegated to my billing staff? Is this affecting the money flow to my practice?
• When a patient comes in, how do I know what to collect and from whom?
• What do we do if an insurance company denies payment?
• Have my revenues been increasing or decreasing over the past several years?
• Do I have the data to understand future trends? To compare this month’s charges, payments, and adjustments to the same month last year?
• Have I been thinking about giving up my private practice due primarily to billing headaches?

These are just a few of the questions you need to be asking yourself to determine if outsourcing your collections to an expert third-party biller is right for you.

Earn As Much or More Than Your Peers

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has resulted in much higher deductibles and co-pays, meaning it’s not enough to be able to submit claims to third-party payers—you must also maximize your self-pay collections. Whether it’s the inability to pay or just plain forgetfulness, patients who don’t or can’t pay translate to more difficulties in collecting what you’re owed. So, we leave you with just one final question to ask yourself:

• Are you the person who should be handling these added administrative headaches when someone else could (and should) be doing it for you, leaving you to concentrate on your specialty and taking great care of your patients?

To learn more about how third-party billers can help increase your revenue and make your practice more efficient talk to a ChartLogic specialist today.