Medical Insurance Billing Services Selection: Reference Checks
Reference checking and the use of an interview guide are key elements of selecting the right medical billing company for your practice. Reference checking is not difficult but it must be designed correctly.
Reference checking is certainly not the only element that must be properly executed in your medical billing company selection. It is, however, one of the more critical and it has several sub-steps that must be properly considered.
These elements include properly defining the type of references that will be meaning for you (e.g., what specialty, geography, length as a client, number of providers, primary payers, etc), obtaining success and failures as references, determining with whom you wish to speak at the references, developing an interview guide for your reference calls, conducting the reference checks, synthesizing the results of the checks and making a final decision about the billing company. The main focus of this article is creating an effective interview guide.
An interview guide is your roadmap for the interview calls that insures you ask everything required to make a good decision. The first step in developing the interview guide is writing out the best and worst case scenarios for the potential billing company. With this in hand create a list of questions that will help you determine where along the spectrum between your two scenarios your potential medical billing service may lie.
Narrow questions are typically much better than broad questions for reference checks. Broad questions such as “Did you billing improve after you outsourced?” will not give you specific enough data to make an informed decision when your reference checks are completed.
To insure you have the information you need at the end of the interview process use narrow questions such as “What were you days in AR before you outsourced and how did they change 3 months after you outsourced?” This gives you specific and actionable data.
Have you ever taken notes during a call and afterwards had trouble deciphering them? If you have you are not alone. A good way to combat this is to leave about a quarter of a page after each question (and sub question) to make sure you can write the answers on the same page with the questions. You have one final to-do before you start making calls. Review your questions with the following thought in mind “Will I be able to make a go no-go decision after these calls?” If not, what questions are you missing? Once you know that you have all your questions in order start scheduling your reference checks.
It is your job to make sure you get specific answers to all of all your questions. Think of yourself as a reporter and do not let the call end until you have all of your questions specifically answered. You will need to practice good time management to make sure this happens in the period the person is allowing for the reference call. If you do not get all of your questions answered, then ask to schedule a second call.
You may find that one of your references brings up a point you had not considered. If they do, add the relevant question to the end of your interview guide and call back any individuals with whom you have already spoken to get this additional information.
With your well planned and structured reference checks complete you will be in a position to make an informed medical billing service decision.
Copyright 2008 by Medical Billing Services Buying Guide.
Filed under: Outsourcing