ICD-10 has gained tremendous importance in medical billing industry because of its huge impact on the worldwide medical practice. Effective since October 1, 2015, this change in coding system has also brought a change in your actionable due to which a disturbance in the cost analysis can be noticed. Without investing your time, efforts, money and human endeavor, it is practically impossible to make your medical billing effective anymore. Facing such a situation, most of the reputed medical firms have begun considering the options of outsourcing their billing tasks to a dedicated billing company.
Trained medical billing professionals know exactly how to maximize your revenue by showcasing their acumen in understanding the changes in industry standards. You no longer would have to worry about auditing the bills because these professional coders are at home in rendering the most accurate bills. As a whole, it is always beneficial to your operations and revenue to outsource your billing requirements to a dedicated billing company that can deliver on time with required precision.
What factors motivate a medical practitioner to face this scenario in business contexts? How are the costs affected with the inception of ICD-10? We discuss a few reasons why your costs can go high in the post-ICD 10 era, thereby risking your revenues and company’s overall performance:
Does your medical billing software support ICD-10 codes?
Your medical billing software needs to incorporate the latest coding system i.e. ICD-10 code sets. Now that the ICD-10 contains many codes that were unheard of in ICD-9, the previous software packages are of little help during the billing process. A new set of codes have begun deserving mentions in a typical medical bill, and unless you can manage to master those codes to get the most precise claims, your health care practice will need expert help.
Upgrading the software to match the industry standards will incur a price thereby affecting the overall costs. Moreover, it is always a hard call for your staff to gain ease with the new software updates and they might take the time to adapt to the new system.
Consultation services: A Solution that Solves Nothing
You may consider consulting a reputed firm about what needs to be done to make your billing process smooth and hassle free. Given the skyrocketing fees that the consulting firms charge these days, it can become a liability for your medical practice. And regardless of what advice you might get, you need to realize that it is you after all who will have to comply with the given suggestions. Thus, it will only add additional load to your in-house staff.
Coders-Certification and Coding Material
Acquiring professionals who are authorized to work on ICD-10 code sets is another thing that you must look out for. Regardless of whether you consider hiring competent ICD-10 certified coding professionals or providing training sessions for your existing workforce, the shift in coding practice has brought a cost that must be endured. Also, in the case of training your employees, it will be time-taking and will demand their full attention, thereby forcing their involvement out of existing office tasks.
You can consider outsourcing the billing and coding tasks to a reputed firm that has ICD-10 certified professionals to look after your billing requirements. Needless to say, that will save your time, labor and will be far more authentic than relying on other alternatives.
Time-consuming: Efficiency reduced
You might have realized that in the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10, your workforce has to put more efforts and stretch beyond their normal work capacity to keep pace with the dynamic business. Indeed, the process is tiring, more so because with the introduction of the new system, there is confusion about what works best with what. Consequently, the overall efficiency of your team slopes downwards, therefore reflecting the adverse impacts on productivity and revenue generation as well.
Allowing a well-trained and efficient billing team is crucial to boosting the revenue at your medical practice. The primary advantage of outsourcing your billing works to a dedicated and competent team is that you can rely on their expertise and get the task done in a shorter time, without compromising on the quality of work. Also, you buy time meanwhile that you can invest in focusing on other aspects of your medical practice such as introducing new services to your patients, expanding your business, etc.
