Selecting Medical Billing Services Using Smart Reference Checks
by: BradFerth |
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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.
Once you have decided that it is time to outsource medical billing there are many important steps to insure that the medical insurance billing services company you select is the right one for you. A key step of the process is checking references. As with the overall selection process, there are many important elements that need to be addressed to insure that your reference check is effective in verifying the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of your potential medical insurance billing company.
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.
Your interview guide will allow you and not the references to determine what topics are addressed in the reference calls. If you do not drive the calls, you may well end the process still unsure about your final decision. To kick-off the interview guide creation think about the worst things and the best things that could happen as a result of medical billing outsourcing. Keeping your mind on these best and worst cases develop questions that will help you determine where between these two extremes your potential medical billing company operates.
You can start by simply writing out each fear and hope as a question. For example, if one of your hopes is that you will be able to spend less time managing and worrying about billing your would start with the question, "Have you spent more of less time on billing since your outsourced to company X?" This question, however, is a bit too subjective. You do not know how much time they spent before or what they consider time spent on billing (for example, is reviewing your coding a billing related item in their mind or a compliance related item).
Given this issue, your next task is to make the question more geared towards gathering objective facts. For instance, you might change the question above to say, ?How many hours per week did you spend before outsourcing on reviewing billing performance reports, reviewing EOBs, and reconciling your bank deposits with your billing system reports? How many hours per week do you spend on this now??
Once you complete the list of questions and make them specific enough to gather objective data type them out in a logical manner and leave the space required to jot down the answer right on the interview guide. Before the first call sit down and look at the questions one final time. Make sure that the answers to these questions will give you the comfort you need to make a final decision. Start making the reference calls once you are confident your interview guide is ready.
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.
Do not hesitate to call back your earlier references if one of the later ones brings up an important potential benefit or concern that you had not considered. You want to insure you hear what all of the references have to say about this new point.
Following the process outlined above will insure that you gather the factual information required to make an informed decision about your medical billing service.
Copyright 2008 by Medical Billing Services Buying Guide.
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About the Author
Brad Firth is a Editor at the Medical Billing Services Buying Guide. He writes about the medical billing industry and how to select medical billing companies at the Medical Billing Blog
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