By JEFF RAMOS

Billing is a vital part of daily life in a medical practice and it is often a predictor if a practice is financially strong. Many practices have a good handle on this important part of the revenue cycle, but have difficulty determining when it’s time to look into third party billing.

There are many things to consider when evaluating the needs of your practice and whether third party billing would be beneficial for your practice. The following is a list of things to consider as you evaluate your own practice and the many benefits of  

• Collection amounts continue to increase, and cash recovery is poor.
• Coding rejections keep occurring.
• Chronic credentialing issues.
• Changing reimbursement models

If you are experiencing some of the above-mentioned scenarios, perhaps its time to take a look at outsourcing with a third party.

The revenue cycle is a critical part of any practice. As we depend more and more on technology to run our daily lives and business functions, it’s important to ensure your practice is equipped with the right tools to meet your practice’s needs while you grow. The cost and complexities associated with creating and running internal billing is very high. The administrator will need to hire, train, certify and carry out an increasingly complex compliance plan. The average cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a new employee is estimated to be between $3500.00 and $4200.00, and does not include the decreased production caused by turnover.

When selecting a third party partner, the ideal outcome is to select a third-party billing partner who can help you generate more income through lowering labor costs, and increasing revenue through denial management, self-pay follow-ups, and calculating fees.  Your billing partner needs to have a strong handle on the practice’s critical KPI’s and the practice manager should be sharing and discussing these on a regular basis. A quality RCM partner will stay current on all of the changes in health regulations and keep the providers current so they can focus on what they do best.

Jeff Ramos, CMRM, can be reached at Elevate Medical Resources, specializing in practice management, revenue cycle optimization, and private practice business support by emailing Jeff@elevatemedicalresources.com