Step to success: Home work before you hire

1)    Check if the company is HIPAA compliant. Find if the company is ISO certified

2)    Ask them how they secure patient’s information apart from the HIPAA compliance.

3)    Know their experience in the medical billing field.

4)    Know their business strategy

5)    How many clients do they work for? (know how your job could be done properly without interruption due to external distraction of other clients)

6)    Know & analyze the benefits you get from the company

7)    Compare the benefits they provide with the benefit you get when you do the job yourself.

8)    Know the deadline that they have set up for task accomplishment in each specialty

9)    Know the details about the medical billing software they use.

10)    Is their technological infrastructure flexible to make changes if required? (In case of adding new clients, process changes etc.,)

11)    Confirm their process accuracy % ( errors in the process might lead to delay or denial of payment)

12)    Do complete cost analysis. Ask if there are hidden costs

13)    Know the basic information about their employees like: How

many employees work in the company, how many are certified

14)    Is the company supported with the latest technology to perform your function?

15)    Does the company work on denial management?

If they work on it, know the level of service.

The most important: Know their business continuity plan in case of emergency, disaster or epidemic disease.

How do they continue the business?

Other – to dos while hiring a medical billing company:

1)    Keep the agreement clear.

2)    Have an eye on the company’s performance.

3)   Consult how they react to specific business challenges pertaining to medical billing –  This is important because you can easily understand their business efficiency

In case you have already hired a medical billing company, check if your service provider is doing well:

1)          Are they good performers?

2)          Do they complete the task in time? (Never do they cross the deadlines)

3)          Is the company flexible to your needs and acts smart at the time of emergency? (just like employing more human resources at the time of need and completing the task )

4)          Are they providing you proper monthly reports with suggestions on financial improvement? (are they explanative)

5)          Does the company stop with medical billing service alone or gives importance to client satisfaction?

6)          How much money do they save you?

Are they available to you all time, for your queries and business communication?

Offshore outsourcing- What researches say?

There are several hundreds of researches on outsourcing, by now. Analyzing these researches, field experts say that “Companies prefer to do offshore outsourcing because of the tremendous cost savings they get from the deal”.

Other factors they mention are:

For the service providers, there should be no compromise for performance.  There is a complex quality framework as target for them which is constantly reviewed. So, performance shouldn’t be a problem for the outsourcers if they keep track of the service providers and have agreements in place.

Risk mitigation is a part of their agenda for service providers and risk management becomes easy for the outsourcer since the risk is shared

So what is the darker side of offshore outsourcing?

1)    Some outsourcers give second thought to offshore outsourcing because of the threat to their confidential information.

2)    Some companies fear that they will lose control of the managerial function while outsourcing.

Communication gap arising out of different language practices in various geographies contribute to fear of offshore outsourcing

How to address these questions on offshore outsourcing:

Confidentiality, business communication and managerial functions are major factors influencing a company’s growth.

It is apparent that offshore outsourcing is highly profitable but involves these risks also.

These are not three different factors that an outsourcer should focus, but is it the question of finding a reliable super performer to whom the task should be outsourced. Once such a company is found, you can very will set your fears apart!

Between success and failure, the gap is finding a good medical billing company to rely on.

Still the answer is unknown for the question whether offshore outsourcing is a boon or bane. It depends upon the outsourcer company’s administration of business and solution provider’s efficiency of operation

Risk sharing: Medical billing is not an easy task. There are lots of business challenges and threats that a medical billing company faces in the day to day scenario, including overall performance of the staff, process efficiency, market fluctuation and competition. It is true that outsourcing the job to an experienced and specialist company in the same field assures risk sharing to a major extent.

Tremendous cost saving: Outsourcing is a smart choice for the medical billing companies to save cost. Offshore outsourcing in specific saves 40%-60% cost to the outsourcer. This includes operations cost and administration cost as well. Great, isn’t it? After all, the fundamental need behind doing a business is gaining profit!

Liberty to focus in the core function: Outsourcing the job to an expert service provider assures some peace of mind to the management and the company can focus in the core activities of ‘Business’.

Helps business expansion: Outsourcers gains more confidence from outsourcing and they could expand their business by targeting new clients and markets.

Competitive advantage: When the other medical billing companies strive to survive the business threats, the outsourcer companies face less stress than the other companies because they have a supporting hand to share the burden. Moreover, after delegating the job to the service provider, the outsourcer companies can concentrate in improving their business.