Outsourced Medical Billing or In-House Medical Billing, which approach is better? – a Mega Debate
Arbitrator:
Today the contestants will focus on 2 main aspects of Medical Billing i.e., Staff Efficiency and Cost Efficiency, as they pertain to In-house Medical Billing vs Outsourced Medical Billing.
Let’s take starting statements from our contestants.
https://webinarcare.com/best-medical-billing-software/medical-billing-statistics
Mr Napolean
I would start by stating that:
“The global medical billing outsourcing market size was valued at USD 11.1 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.0% from 2022 to 2030”
Increasing burden of handling newer technology on practice staff, increasing patient consumerism and ever-changing CMS regulations are the primary drivers behind practices opting to outsource their billing.
Staff feels threatened by the complex software requirements and may feel overwhelmed by extra tasks that are required from them. Doctors and support staff should have time and mental peace to care for patients rather than worrying about technology and changing regulations
https://www.vocalcom.com/blog/top-threats-facing-your-contact-center
Ms Gretchen
Look at how businesses started outsourcing their services to Call Centers but soon realized that their brand is best represented by their internal teams. 53% of companies in 2019 reported that they reverted towards internal teams from third party call centers.
Yes, more technology means increased burden on the practice staff but where technology scares the staff at your practice, with training it becomes a tool that can reduce redundant tasks and fast track your day-to-day activities, thereby negating the initial need to outsource.
Keeping the operations inhouse definitely helps you maintain better patient relationships. The staff knows the patients better, resulting in excellent patient advocacy, which is the goal of every practice.
Arbitrator:
An interesting turn, it seems that both the participants agree that adoption of good technology, can help the practice achieve financial goals whether inhouse medical billing approach or outsourced.
Now let’s talk about Patient Consumerism.
Mr Napolean
Patients expect doctors to treat them as customers of their care service. They pay and thus they want to be given super treatment. They expect less wait time, extra care time and clear communication w.r.t their diagnosis and their bills. This keeps my staff on their toes, as along with giving care service they take care of patient’s excess demands. It isn’t fair to make them spend time and energy over patient’s claim management process as well.
The worst nightmare for my practice, was to talk to insurance providers for hours at a time in order to get a certain error on a patient claim corrected. In a study it was reported that doctors spend, on average, 2 hours daily on calls to clear patient claim queries.
Outsourcing was a saving grace here. We saved 4 hours per day that were other wise spent on claim queries, claim tracking, data correction etc and now my staff is dedicated towards their main tasks i.e., providing care service to the patients.
Ms Gretchen
Patient wants attention, I agree, but what about the patients who call in with queries, will a third party be able to manage that with complete confidence and knowledge? Will your billing advocate be able to manage your Medical Practice’s sensitivities?
Inhouse Medical Billing ensures that patients get immediate and satisfactory answers but this doesn’t over burden my staff. No, I can easily say that my staff isn’t over worked and the communication between doctors and patients is clear and transparent.
A good Medical Billing Software (research done on 5 top rated Medical Billing and Practice Management Software) improves overall Medical Practice’ productivity by 35%
Yes, patients demand extra attention, but thanks to the efficiency with which the technology platform assists the medical billing process at my Medical Practice, the staff has all the time to aid to patient demands.
The medical billing software comes with excellent features that enables easy patient scheduling hence avoiding long patient wait times. It allows patients to log on to their respective profiles to have access to their diagnosis or their statements.
The communication feature on the software removes the need to call insurance providers by allowing a portal where easy communication occurs. My staff never spends more than a few minutes on queries. Data retraction and correction is so easy that it doesn’t seem like an added task.
Mr Napolean
Ok so a good Medical Billing Software might be a solution but what about cost associated to it. You need to purchase the software, you need to train your staff, then pay for upgrades, the retrain your staff as per the updated version. Add to it the changing regulations, the CMS edits and technology advancement. It exhausts my practice’s account.
Outsourcing is simple that way, I just pay a standard service fee and rest is taken care of by my medical billing advocate company. It saves me cost i.e., installation costs, training costs, upgradation costs.
Research depicted that Medical Practices can cut down 30% of their expenses by outsourcing their Medical Billing Process.
Ms Gretchen
The debate here is backed by sound facts and experiences, what the masses are doing might not be the only solution in the long run.
Business world runs on data, by outsourcing you lose your socio-clinical capital. Think about it this way, if a claim has error and the insurance company needs to get that corrected, they would call your practice or the third party? And if they inquire from third party, your staff might still get called as the patient is recording the data initially in your data base, is it not so?
The costs associated with inhouse medical billing are all one-time costs and I must say, with the competitive edge it offers (having my practice data inhouse), it is all worth it.
I got a good medical billing software installed and the company offered complementary training and support services. The software is user friendly and upgradation doesn’t require the staff to be retrained. The team members that are dedicated to monitoring and implementation of medical billing process ensures that the process runs smoothly. The software is inter-connected with internet and using machine learning techniques, it keeps updating itself as per new regulations and CMS edits.
We managed to increase our profit margins by 61% in last two years therefore cost to profit ratio clearly depicts that inhouse medical billing is the way of future.
Arbitrator:
This is interesting, the same point is again highlighted in the debate. A good Medical Billing Software leads to an efficient Medical Billing process. Although, the size of practice doing the medical billing needs to be kept under consideration.
It might be so, but a third approach towards Medical Billing process is coming to surface.
Stay tuned for the final day – DAY 3 of the debate, to find out once and for all, which approach is better, Inhouse Medical Billing or Outsourced Medical Billing?
AltuMED is a Medical Billing Service and Solution Company that understands the importance of prompt, systematic Medical Billing Performance Analysis. Why not contact us for a complimentary analysis that can help us understand the reason for increase in your AR rate?
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