A mental health America report states that around 19% of American adults face mental illness. That percentage is equivalent to over 47 million US residents. Among them, 4.55% experience extreme illness. The percentage of adults with severe thoughts of suicide is 4.34%, around 10.7 million. The need for behavioral healthcare providers increased over the period. Hence, increasing the number of patients visiting behavioral healthcare providers. The increase in the patient base gives rise to the increase in patient data and the need for efficient healthcare outcomes. Medical billing is a complicated process regardless of the section of Healthcare. Behavioral Healthcare involves a lot more details about patients. To increase investment in your healthcare facility, you must increase cash inflow. Whereas to increase the number of patients, you require efficient healthcare outcomes. The benefits of Outsourcing medical billing include their help for every size of the organization to perform efficiently.
Why is outsourcing medical billing in behavioral health important?
Healthcare is an ever-changing industry. The change in this industry is not only rapid but continuous. To survive in the extreme competition, healthcare providers cannot afford human errors in billing or coding. Guidelines from insurance companies are quite difficult to follow. There is a fine line between accurate coding and erroneous coding. It has become difficult to keep up with regularly changing rules and regulations. At the same time, Healthcare involves many patients’ personal information. New, improved laws and regulations are introduced to safeguard patient data. To beat the competition, healthcare providers spend time speeding up the processes. If your facility has multiple offices, then the competition becomes stricter. In behavioral health, Healthcare revolves around personalized care. Outsourcing medical billing can help you to improve healthcare outcomes. Over the years, behavioral health organizations realized that their in-house team is insufficient for coding and speedy billing.
The question raises here “why you must think of outsourcing medical billing companies”? The answer to the question is a well-established outsourcing medical billing services provider manages to keep your business up-to-date, efficient, effective, and speedy.
Outsourcing medical billing will provide the expertise mentioned below;
- Credentialing
- Checking insurance eligibility
- Clean Claim submissions, resubmissions of the claims
- Working on rejections and denials
- Payment posting
- Management of Accounts receivables
- Preparing and providing on-time statements/ reports
- Handling Human Resources and compliance
- Advantages of outsourcing medical billing
- Handles Audit issues
- Roll-ups
Explore the key advantages of outsourcing medical billing and revenue cycle management. For behavioral health facilities, the need for outsourcing medical billing increases.
Outsource medical billing will help you in numerous ways, including these
Staffing Cost
Building an in-house team is a difficult task. It requires a lot of expenses, from ads to hiring. You require office space, computers, software, servers, etc., for your team to work correctly. After hiring your team, they need specific industry training. Your staff also needs credentialing for behavioral health insurance. At the same time, the software needs regular updates. These updates are also expensive. These expenses pile up over time and keep on increasing.
Outsourced medical billing services will enable you to access credentialed, trained and experienced staff. The overhead cost of office space, furniture, and software diminish. You only have to pay a fixed amount to outsource medical billing services.
Improved Revenue Cycle Management
Nowadays, the need for behavioral health increases. Introduction of MACRA and MIP, the complexity of the medical bills increased. The claim process has become more challenging. RCM software or outsourced medical billing for behavioral health is specifically made for behavioral health providers. It helps care providers process payments, manage claims and create billing applications. The hospital revenue cycle management consistently improves.
Patient Data Security.
Behavioral Healthcare involves tons of information. Information security is the main concern of healthcare providers. A professional who outsources medical billing HIPAA compliant is responsible for protecting this patient information.
Reduce Coding Errors
The benefit of outsourcing medical billing in behavioral health comes with righteous codes. Even a small coding error can lead to denials. Outsource medical billing helps correct the coding error and resubmit the claims. A specialty medical billing service provider follow-ups the claims submissions. Their coders and billers have experience and have trained much better than the in-house billing team.
Consistency
Establishing a billing team is not only difficult but maintaining it is also costly. Unplanned staffing absence and changes can put your revenue cycle management at risk. An outsourced medical billing service provider consists of a team of experienced coders and billers. The experienced staff ensures clean claims management. They prepare claims efficiently, submit them on time, and get reimbursed on time. They ensure non-interruption in revenue cycle management.
Efficient claim Management
Outsourcing a medical billing company will help you in efficient claim management. Their coders are up-to-date and perfect in coding. So, the chances of clean claims submissions and clearance increase. They consistently follow up with insurance in a clear, timely manner. In-house billing teams usually lack follow-up. Usually, the in-house team forgets to follow up on rejected claims. The healthcare facilities have to write off these claims. These unpaid claims add to the losses.
The benefits of outsourcing medical billing come with credentialing facilities and insurance information. Outsource medical billing reduces the personal administrative load, processes quickly and consistently, and submits claims process of insurance claims.
Transparency
It is a common myth that outsourcing medical billing companies take control of your office operations from your hands. It is reverse than thought. Outsourcing medical billing increases your control over the business. Because by outsourcing medical billing, your revenue cycle management improves. Your control and transparency over the business increase when you have financial freedom.
Outsourcing medical billing enhances transparency as you can review your data and monitor the billing process anytime or according to the requirement. So, you can get the report of every minute of your business.
Reduce losses
Due to an inexperienced team, coding or billing errors, or wrongly submitted claims, a healthcare provider may losses their cash inflow. Outsourcing medical billing company will help you to simplify the process. It releases your staff burden and simplifies your financial processes and claim submission easily. The efficient and clear claim submission needs complete documentation, coding, etc., which is only possible when your data entry is correct. All the documents and codes are complete and accurate. If the claim denies, the outsourced medical billing team takes this task, rechecks the whole case, identifies the errors, and submits it after corrections.
Profitability
Healthcare entities face revenue losses due to incorrect claims. The main reasons for claims denial are either incorrect or missing codes or late submissions. If you outsource medical billing, the chances of profitability increase. Partner with a qualified behavioral health billing service provider because they have expert billers and coders than in-house staff. They have accurate coding knowledge, and their expertise ensures better claim clearance. As they can pinpoint the error easily and rectify that, medical billers and coders can help you clear the previous claims. Besides clearance of previous claims, the chances of a clear claim submission are 90% more.
Knowledge base.
Medical codes and regulations for healthcare services payments are consistently changing. In-house teams are often not very well trained. Some healthcare entities cannot afford their consistent and repeated training. In most cases, the in-house team lacks up-to-date knowledge of recent codes. At the same time, the outsourced medical billing company has experienced, well-trained, and updated knowledge. Keeping their staff up-to-date is their requirement as they have to be specialized in the subject. The practices of a medical billing company give them an understanding of the insurance payment trends, policies, etc. The knowledge regarding payment trends can positively affect your behavioral health organizations. They can help you collect more payments from the insurance providers.
Speed Up the process.
Outsourcing a medical billing company can automate most of the administrative tasks. Automating these administrative tasks can help you speed up your business processes.
A standard paper-based claim may take one to two months to clear through all the channels, and then you receive payment. Advancement or electronic submissions with appropriate coding may help reduce the time of claim clearance—the time frame from submission to support shrinks with the help of the Electronic health records system. Faster claims reimbursements can result in enhanced profitability.
Time-saving benefits of outsourcing medical billing
Outsourcing medical billing not only helps you to reduce the employee’s burden, but it can reduce their time spent on repetitive tasks. The employees can invest their time in revenue generation activities.
Building an in-house medical billing team can eat up your time. You have to look after the building, audit, and check whether staff should increase or decrease it. The staffing issues like training, leaves, etc., take much managerial work. Outsourcing medical billing frees you from the tension of building an in-house team. You can save the time for administrative tasks that you can use this time to launch marketing campaigns and provide better healthcare outcomes.
Collections
If a healthcare practice provides services to the patients and receives less or no payment means loss. Behavioral healthcare providers usually have lower compensation rates than the other sectors of Healthcare because behavioral Healthcare involves fewer medical tests and procedures.
Outsourcing medical billing for behavioral Healthcare can increase the overall collections. You can spend time bringing efficient healthcare outcomes that are helpful in qualitative Healthcare. Qualitative healthcare outcomes will increase reimbursements from insurance providers.
Key Take-aways
There are numerous reasons for outsourcing behavioral health billing to a professional medical billing company. The benefits of Outsourcing medical billing services may reduce the burden on your internal staff and resources. The best medical billing companies with multiple years of experience help you increase profitability, efficiency, and effectiveness. BellMedEx provides revenue cycle management, denial management, and ICD-1o behavioral coding expertise. Medical billing and credentialing, EHR and EMR. Choose any of the services according to your requirement and pay right.
