Hospitalist Billing Services
Hospitalist billing is well understood by ClaimCare Medical Billing Services. Our understanding and expertise in this complicated field can save your practice a considerable amount of lost revenue. Medical practices lose money every single day (often over 20 percent of their realizable income) because they are not utilizing medical billing specialists, technologies, processes and management that can compete with insurance companies.
As physicians are taking into consideration the use of medical billing services to stop the hemorrhaging of cash from their practices, they are faced with a broad range of options. On the diminutive end of the spectrum are home-based medical billers. On the opposite end of the spectrum are medical billing companies that employ hundreds of medical billers and have thousands of clients.
In thinking through the billing options available, it is essential to understand that medical billing is complicated and requires deep expertise and expansive experience. When a specialty is involved, as with a hospitalist, the requirements for medical billing success become even harder to obtain. Success requires that the medical billing company have a team that is knowledgeable in the complex rules utilized by insurance companies to judge hospitalist's medical claims.
With hospitalist facing ever increasing costs they must insure that money is not being left on the table because they have a medical billing company that is not a hospitalist billing expert. Hospitalist must also be aware that that many billing companies that claim hospitalist billing expertise actually outsource their hospitalist billing work to at home billers. Situations like this are fraught with risk since the remote workers are not working in a controlled and monitored environment.
One of the major drawbacks of hiring a medical billing company that does not specialize in hospitalist billing is their lack of familiarity with the procedures and the terminologies used. Even if the medical billing company serves one or two hospitalist, they will lack the depth and breadth of expertise required for successful hospitalist billing. Moreover if the hired company does not specialize in billing for hospitalist, then they will not have the expertise to effectively appeal denied claims or answer questions raised by the insurance companies.
Successful hospitalist billing requires the ability to track underpayments. This requirement often exceeds the capabilities of the billing software used by many billing companies. This is a critical failing since proper pursuit of underpayments can increase a hospitalist's collections by 5 to 7 percent.
It is not only insurance billing that is more complicated for hospitalist; patient billing is also more difficult. The patients often have high balances, complicated explanations from their payers and do not understand all of the invoices they are receiving from their hospitalist. A billing company that has strong hospitalist billing experience has spoken with patient about such statements many times before. A less skilled patient collection effort could leave the hospitalist with less money and unhappy patients.
The bottom-line: It is not worth the risk for a hospitalist to use a billing company that does not focus on hospitalist billing.
To learn more about how ClaimCare Medical Billing Services can help your hospitalist practice please fill out the form to the left or contact a local ClaimCare office.