A Few Medical Billing Program Selection Tips
Finding the right medical billing program can be easy if you follow a few simple guidelines. Firstly and most importantly, it must be HIPAA compliant. If is not compliant, don’t even consider buying it, as the penalties for even minor infraction of the law can be severe. HIPAA compliant software will ensure that all your electronic transactions are in the correct format, which in turn will ensure that you are paid promptly and within the specified time period. It has been estimated that around 20% of medical bills don’t get paid, so insuring that your software tracks payments and provides regular reports should be high on your list of priorities when choosing.
If you are a small medical practice it may be beneficial to consider outsourcing your medical billing. Professional billing companies will either charge a set fee per transaction - usually between $3 and $12 for a simple claim filing service - or they may charge a percentage of fees received, which can range up to 12% for a fully integrated service. This can really help alleviate some of the problems associated with billing, but you must insure that you outsource to a high quality, efficient company. To whatever extent possible, before outsourcing consider the cost of the outside service compared to having your own in house program.
Buying a top of the line program like the Medisoft billing software can have additional benefits for your business as the higher priced software will usually give you access to a wide variety of reports covering things from patient demographics to diagnoses. This is in addition to the standard billing and payment reports. Additionally, it should also be able to record all the patients' appointments, thus eliminating the need for a separate appointment program. If you ensure that the software is easy to use, it will help improve efficiency and your staff will become that much more productive. A final but vitally important benefit is that electronic billing requests are on average paid out within 2 weeks compared to up to 2 months for paper bills.
Before choosing a medical billing program you should seek feedback from all the staff that will need access to it. Ask them what they need and what would be of benefit to them on a day to day basis. By including your staff in the buying decision you will help stave off possible problems at a later date. Once you have narrowed the list of possible programs down to two or three, ask to see working demonstrations. It can be particularly effective if you can visit a practice of a similar size and see how they are using the software. Where possible, have a working demonstration set up in your office and encourage all the staff to try it. Choosing the correct software should not be that difficult a task if you take your time throughout the process.
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