Are you running a successful ABA therapy practice or considering starting one? Then you’re probably looking at the pros and cons of in-house billing vs. outsourcing. Read on to discover 10 reasons to outsource medical billing, from reducing costs to ensuring faster, more streamlined patient collections.
1. Reduce internal staffing costs
If you decide to go down the in-house billing route, you’ll need to create a well-functioning in-house billing department. Unfortunately, reliable, knowledgeable staff are expensive and hard to find. By opting to outsource billing instead, you’ll avoid the payroll costs associated with setting up an expensive billing department and only pay for services when the insurance company pays you.
2. Reduce training, supervision, and hiring costs
Finding suitable staff members to operate an in-house billing department is just step one of the process. There are more challenges that await once you’ve hired your experts – particularly when it comes to training your new employees and maintaining compliance for your practice.
Keep in mind that when insurance providers receive claims, they’re making sure that you’ve submitted an accurate CPT code for the ABA services you provided. There’s a risk of claim denial if the code supplied isn’t the most accurate code in line with the services rendered. With many different codes in place, along with regular changes to these codes, memorizing them can be tricky, and, as a result, errors are a lot more likely when claims are submitted by in-house departments.
How do you train and supervise your staff on billing when you don’t know the rules and requirements? Even if you manage to familiarize yourself with these intricacies, how will you keep up with changes? When you outsource, the increasing costs of training, supervising, and even hiring will no longer be your responsibility or stress. You’ll have experts in your corner who’ll always be up-to-date and ready to assist you.
3. Reduce overhead space requirements
An in-house billing department will lead to the physical growth of your practice, which could mean a need for larger premises – yet another cost to cover. A benefit of outsourcing medical billing is eliminating the need to find a more suitable office space while, at the same time, freeing up more space for your patients and clinical staff and reducing your administrative overheads.
4. Outsourced billing services are scalable and flexible to handle growth or changes in your business
As your practice grows, your billing services can grow accordingly, and you don’t have to worry about hiring, training, or finding a workplace for the new staff. Your billing provider should easily be able to accommodate your growth and be prepared to handle changes in your business. On the other hand, if managing billing in-house, any positive growth for your practice automatically equates to a need to hire and train more billing staff.
5. Increased access to industry information for claims, authorizations, compliance, and payer-specific information
The insurance industry is constantly changing ABA billing and coding rules, reimbursement rates, and authorization requirements, making reimbursement for services a constant struggle. Having an experienced billing team on your side will give you access to knowledge and information that is time-consuming and difficult to find, as well as challenging to understand, interpret, and implement.
6. Frees up the provider’s time to focus on patients
Billing and the entire revenue cycle process are time-consuming, challenging, and stressful. When you outsource, your focus stays with the heart of your business – your patients.
7. Collect your revenue faster
While patient collections shouldn’t be stressful or complicated, the reality is that they often are. In many cases, collecting revenue can be time-consuming and may require various follow-ups conducted by in-house staff. With the sole focus on billing, a medical billing outsource company has the time and knowledge to facilitate the billing process faster than most providers can do on their own. Claims are submitted more quickly, and pursued, and revenue deposited in your bank faster.
8. Higher collections rate
With an understanding of billing and RCM, billing providers have a higher success rate in obtaining authorizations, collecting clean claims, and appealing denials, thus resulting in more revenue for your company.
9. Less stress on business owner/CEO/Executive Director
Financial stress for owners and leadership teams can be distracting, burdensome, and even debilitating at times. Outsourcing to your billing partner can alleviate stress when revenue is steadier and more consistent.
10. Decrease technology costs
Billing software and claims processing fees at the clearing house are constantly on the rise. When you outsource billing, those technology fees may become the responsibility of the billing company and decrease your overall technology costs.
Missing Piece: Your ABA Billing Experts
With over 10 years of experience serving ABA providers of all sizes across the country, at Missing Piece, we provide the highest quality ABA billing services, so you can focus on providing the highest quality care and behavioral health services to your clients and their families. The benefits of outsourcing medical billing are enormous, especially if you have access to turnkey billing services designed to cover your practice when it comes to everything from patient billing and claims management to pre-authorization and credentialing and contracting. If you want to learn more about outsourcing your billing or if you’d like to schedule a free billing analysis, contact us at 765-628-7400 or weare@yourmissingpiece.com.