Using a medical billing company to safeguard your practice from ICD-10

There has been a lot of talk about the ideal medical billing company, particularly with respect to the intimidating ICD-10 changes which threaten to be a huge burden for practices.

A Black Book Rankings survey comprised of responses from over 20,000 trained and qualified users between November 2013 and April 2014 reported interesting findings; including this one on outsourcing medical billing. When asked about their practice’s operational priorities over the upcoming years, about 90 percent of single-physician and small practice physicians with in-house billers said they would potentially outsource most or all their billing-related functions over the next two years.

The preference for a medical billing vendor by smaller practices in particular looks to be a result of the complex nature of ICD codes, which make billing extremely time consuming.

ICD-10 is going to be big, and the new coding format mean that there are additional subdivisions for most diagnosis.  Moreover, the numbering will be completely different from what it was before.

And with ICD-10 and thousands of new codes almost upon us, physicians, especially those who understand the current codes; don’t want to go through the hassle of learning the codes all over again.

If we look at the advantages of using a professional billing company for ICD-10, the need for trained, competent and experienced billers is essential. They will have the necessary tools that are required to ensure that the billing progresses smoothly.

Moreover, any difficulty in billing that these professionals encounter is likely to be dealt with in significantly less time. This is because they will have experts for different dimensions of medical billing; and with these experts will have the option to solve problems among themselves. In contrast, one or two in-house billers at your practice encountering similar problems could take significantly longer to resolve such problems; resulting in potential collection delays and in turn lesser revenue for your practice.  

Other benefits of medical billing vendors include lower staff costs, faster claim reimbursement and lesser chances of fraud.

Must read about: Why Physician ICD-10 Fears are unfounded, CMS explains