What Makes Medical Billing Cumbersome and Inefficient?

Medical billing is a complex process that needs to be carried out with an eye for accuracy and specificity. This process is usually carried out by medical billers who execute all the steps of the medical billing process ranging from patient registration to filing claims and following up. The process of medical billing can turn cumbersome and inefficient due to various reasons, which are as follows:

• Manual Verification of Patient Status

Manual verification involves going through every nitty-gritty of a claim form in detail. As there is a lot of information that needs to be included, the process becomes very monotonous and detailed. Moreover, the details need to be validated to ensure there are no errors. All these make it very cumbersome.

• Postponing Co-Payment Collection

Co-payment is the money that is to be paid by the patient for availing the medical service. When this amount is not collected quick enough, it will get postponed and end up needlessly dragging the billing process.

• Lack of Access to Experienced and Skilled Resources

Experienced medical billers and coders are a necessity to ensure that the RCM process is carried out without any hassles. Finding such skilled workforce is a challenge due to geographical limitations and such. The billing and coding staff also need to be trained regularly to keep up with the changing policies and regulations. This is what makes the RCM process cumbersome, when the lack of a skilled workforce eventually leads to many manual errors. This is why, outsourcing medical billing services is a better option since these third-party companies will already have highly trained staff. Most of the well-established outsourcing companies will also have their offices in different locations across the globe. This will help them recruit skilled billers and coders without geographical limitations.

• Staying Up-To-Date with Technological Advancements

Many technologies become obsolete as time passes and the healthcare providers need to make their technical system setups up-to-date with the evolving advancements. This will help them ramp up their medical billing and coding efficiency since the new technologies make it easier to find errors in the system and resolve them. If the necessary changes are not made quickly, the RCM process will continue to be a cumbersome process.

• Failing to Train Medical Coders

Medical coding is an essential step in medical billing that is carried out by medical coders. These coders need to undergo constant training in order to learn and unlearn codes. This is because the alphanumerical coding regulations go through changes, and the previous code books become outdated. Not all companies make it a practice to train coders, because of which coders fall behind in understanding the latest requirements. This again leads to inefficient billing.

Is medical billing proving to be a major pain point of your RCM process? If so, you are not alone. Keeping up with present due accounts and pursuing past due accounts hand-in-hand has rendered medical billing into a heavy and scattered work that entails a continuous tight rope walk. And resigning yourself to a balancing act is just not a sustainable way to grow. To set things in order, your medical billing process needs a partner who will assist you identify where you are wasting your time and discover opportunities to improve your workflow and optimize your cash flow.

Medical billing is a process that requires well-defined workflows and experienced medical billers. As medical billing errors prove to be costly and time-consuming, most hospital groups turn to partner with companies to outsource their medical billing services. Outsourcing is a proven way to weed out inefficiencies in medical billing.