Are administrative duties bogging down the way you run your practice? Many physicians are caught up in a cycle of devoting heavy hours and resources to medical billing that could be applied to providing innovative care and service. Being in a perpetual state of trying to catch up with outstanding patient bills does not place a practice in a strategic position for growth.
The need to push so many resources toward revenue management can drastically reduce a practice’s ability to grow and thrive. It can also result in lower levels of patient happiness and staff satisfaction. These things can set the tone for how a practice is perceived. Unfortunately, many doctors continue to push towards keeping payment collections in the office. They believe that this allows the practice a greater level of control. However, having to directly supervise or hire a medical office manager to supervise billing specialists only puts more of a burden on medical practices.
What does it really mean to manage a practice today? Physicians already spend more than 16 percent of their working hours on administrative duties. Research tells us that doctors who spend more time on administrative duties like medical billing have lower rates of career satisfaction. Factors like the implementation of electronic records and privacy risks associated with file management are behind why doctors feel burdened and unsatisfied in their work. In-house medical billing only increases administrative tasks.
It might be time to get billing out of your office. Outsourcing collection duties to revenue cycle management (RCM) firms gives you the freedom to invest time and resources back into your practice. Are you not sure if you are ready to take the plunge and outsource revenue management? Let’s look at some of the practical reasons why you may have simply outgrown in-house medical billing.
How much would an additional nurse, scheduling specialist, marketing manager or patient liaison make in the operation of your practice? These are roles that generate meaningful engagement and patient retention. Unfortunately, if you are bogged down with managing a payment staff, you may not have the revenue to hire additional staff.
An internal payment department for a smaller practice is one of the most difficult things to manage. These positions generally have notoriously high turnover rates. The repetition and lack of growth involved in these roles make it hard to keep talent. What’s more, professionals with the sophisticated skills needed for medical billing and medical coding prefer the salaries and perks that go along with working for larger firms. The result is that you end up putting lots of energy and resources toward maintaining a system that your patients will never see or benefit from.
Outsourcing to a larger company with the tech and security in place to protect patient data can take this very large responsibility off of your plate. In addition to passing on the work of managing bills, you’re also passing on the responsibility of safeguarding data. This can free up the investment you’d have to put into expensive IT systems necessary for guarding financial data belonging to patients.
You’re turning your practice back into a space that’s focused on the patient when you outsource the management of patient bills to a third-party firm. This creates positive results for both your patients and your staff members. Now’s the time to explore how outsourcing one of your biggest and most frustrating tasks to a revenue cycle management firm can help your practice to thrive. Schedule a demo to discover how you can relax yourself by outsourcing your medical billing.
The Physicians Lifeguard