In an era when an estimated 80% of all medical bills in this country contain errors of some kind, it’s easy to see why this is one of the largest pain points facing private practices in particular. Billing errors don’t just literally cost a healthcare organization money in terms of lost revenue due to unpaid or inaccurate bills. They take away time, energy, and resources from the most important thing of all: providing critical care to as many patients as possible.
It’s important to note that this isn’t simply an issue for medical providers. Another study estimated that the average family in the United States loses approximately $500 per year due to medical billing-related issues.
Thankfully, Medical billing software has come a long way in recent years and promises to help relieve all of these issues and more. But not every medical billing platform is created equally. If you want to make sure you’re investing in the right technology to finally address medical billing in 2024, there are a number of important things to keep in mind.
What's New in Medical Billing Software? Your Overview
While most medical billing solutions will provide the same basic functionality in that they allow you to send out patient invoices and receive payments in return, some go significantly deeper than only that. To truly make the most out of this tech-driven healthcare revolution, you’ll want to look for a platform with some or even all the following characteristics:
- Your medical billing software should give you the ability to not only generate invoices for patients, but for insurance companies as well.
- Similarly, it should give you the option to receive payments directly from both insurance companies and patients. This is a great way to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get paid.
- It should integrate with a lot of the other tools that you’re using so that the platform itself acts as a “single source of truth” for your practice, chronicling every important interaction your employees are having with patients, regardless of where they’re having it.
- You should be ale to establish both customer contracts and agreements, as this is very relevant to the larger billing process.
- Your solution should be able to scale as your practice does the same. If you decide to greatly expand the amount of doctors or other workers in your practice, it shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to add those users to your platform.
- There should be features available that make it easier for medical professionals to not only communicate with themselves, but with patients as well. Examples of this include but are not limited to group messaging functionality, shared calendars that sync with appointment and/or scheduling software, secure email for direct communication, and more.
- Eligibility verification should be a standard feature, as this helps to relieve one of the most common reasons that medical claims are often rejected by insurance companies in the first place.
More than anything, there’s no “one size fits all” approach to choosing the right medical billing software. Start with your needs and work your way back to a platform that can meet as many of them as possible. Don’t start with a platform and hope that it works for your unique situation.
How Do Medical Billing Companies Drive Revenue For Your Practice?
The most immediate way that medical billing companies help drive revenue for your practice has to do with how they keep money coming in the door in the most efficient way possible.
According to another study, it’s been estimated that hospital coding mistakes account for approximately 63% of all medical billing errors. Therefore, having a process in place that A) eliminates human error and the other factors that cause issues like coding mistakes in the first place, while B) also increasing efficiency through automation, would remove one of the major obstacles that often prevent practices from getting paid in a timely manner.
With the right medical billing company by your side, you can also be certain that these error-free bills are going out to patients as quickly as possible and are being followed up on appropriately. You no longer have to wonder how many patient invoices are still outstanding, or work to discover them so that someone can be tasked with following up on them. The system itself will keep track of everything, automatically alerting the right people so that they can take action sooner rather than later.
Many modern medical billing software solutions also include reporting features that could allow you to learn more about patients who consistently pay late, or about the most common reasons for these cash flow problems. That way, you can take direct action to relieve these concerns and “treat the disease, not just the symptom,” so to speak.
In a larger sense, medical billing companies drive revenue for a practice by helping to improve the overall quality of the experience you’re able to offer to patients. The healthcare space is growing increasingly competitive and smaller practices in particular need to do everything they can to stand out. Offering outstanding care 100% of the time is a perfect way to do that.
The less time people spend on important-but-menial administrative tasks like medical billing, the more time they can spend focusing on exceeding expectations. This both helps to keep new patients coming in the door and keeps existing ones satisfied, too. According to one survey, about 43% of healthcare organizations say that they lose more than 10% of revenue due to poor patient retention.
Key Takeaways
- Research indicates that the vast majority of all medical bills in the United States contain errors of some kind.
- When these errors aren’t costing practices money, they’re resulting in overpayments for the average family of approximately $500 per year.
- Medical billing software can help automate this process, making sure the bills that go out are as accurate as possible.
- They also help improve the patient experience, which goes a long way towards improving the retention rate as well.
The Path to a Better Practice Begins Now
PrognoCIS is an advanced EHR platform that is designed to help with not only medical billing services, but other essential tasks like telemedicine as well. It’s an HIPAA-compliant option that lets you create easily customizable workflows, templates, reports, and more. It’s an ideal opportunity to optimize an organization’s cash flow by making sure patient bills are sent out on-time and paid just as quickly, all in the name of creating the easiest and most convenient patient experience possible.
If you’d like to get even more tips about choosing the right medical billing solutions for 2024 and beyond, or if you’d just like to find out how medical billing software companies can help improve your own practice, please feel free to contact Bizmatics, Inc. today.
