Cardiologists Need to Insist Upon Cardiology Billing Experts
Medical billers and medical billing services are the financial backbone of a medical practice. Practices that do not have the right medical billing expertise in their corner can easily lose more than 20 percent of their practice’s potential revenue.
Medical billing outsourcing is a growing trend that medical practices and facilities are employing to level the playing field with insurance companies. Potential outsourcing options start with individual medical billers working from their home to medical billing services that with thousands of providers.
Medical billing is a highly complex area and it requires experience-based knowledge and expertise to contend with insurance companies. When it comes to cardio billing, the situation gets even more complex. Such complexity can be handled only by a company that is staffed with well trained cardiac billing professionals. The medical billing specialist must be familiar with the specific codes and rules that make up the world of cardiology billing.
As the cost of providing cardiovascular related healthcare services continues to rise, medical institutions and cardiology practices cannot afford to leave revenue uncollected by billing companies or freelancers that are not knowledgeable in cardiovascular billing. It is also important to keep in mind some companies may promote themselves as large cardiology billing service providers but in reality they sub-contract the cardiac billing to freelancers who work from home. Hiring such companies will lead to lost revenue because of the lack of proper process, controls, and training.
One of the major drawbacks of hiring a company that does not specialize in cardiology billing is their lack of familiarity with the procedures and the terminologies used. Even if the medical billing company serves one or two cardiologists, they will lack the depth and breadth of expertise required for successful cardiovascular billing. Moreover if the hired company does not specialize in billing for cardiologists, then they will not have the expertise to effectively appeal denied claims or answer questions raised by the insurance companies.
Good cardio billing requires the ability to track underpayments. This is more complicated than typical medical billing because of the rules around multiple-procedures. This complication often exceeds the capabilities of the billing software used by generalist billing companies. This is a critical failing since proper pursuit of underpayments can increase a cardiologist’s collections by 7 to 10 percent.
The cardiology-driven difficulties of medical billing encompass patient billing also. A cardiologist’s patient balance process is more challenging because most of the balances are quite sizeable. Coupling this with the difficulties of explaining to a patient their complicated Explanation Of Benefits and the cardiovascular terminology on their bills drives the need for patient collection specialists that have a strong expertise in cardiac billing. If patients are not handles with care then cardiologists will see their patient collections fall and their patient complains rise – not a good combination.
The bottom-line: It is not worth the risk for a cardiologist to use a billing company that is not as focused as he or she is on cardiology. Just as a patient should not go to a family doctor for complex cardiovascular diagnostics, a cardiologist should not go to a generalist billing company for medical billing.
Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II
Filed under: Outsourcing