Quest Diagnostics is excited to present this article by Laurie Morgan. In her recent webinar, Choosing or switching your RCM vendor: avoid pitfalls, maximize upside, Laurie shares information about opportunities for practices to upgrade technology, whether switching RCM vendors or outsourcing billing for the first time.

Outsourcing your medical billing has the potential to improve productivity and the patient experience. In my recent post, “Signs it’s time to consider alternative RCM solutions,” I share more about how insufficient technology and staff redundancy may signal that your practice could benefit from a new RCM platform. Below are 4 additional reasons to consider outsourcing your billing solution.

Your in-house biller wears too many hats

If your manager is handling billing as well as running your office, it can be hard for them to excel at either task. What’s more, depending on a single person to perform all of your practice’s critical management and revenue cycle tasks introduces a significant amount of avoidable risk.

Outsourcing your billing (or even part of it) can help protect your practice from a catastrophic situation if a key employee decides to move on.  

Your practice is growing

If your practice billing volume is increasing quickly, outsourcing RCM can help you respond quickly. Managing rapid growth by hiring additional staff can prove difficult in many markets because billing talent is often in short supply. Outsourcing can allow you to increase billing productivity and may enable your practice to tap into deeper expertise. Expanding your current biller’s responsibilities to include overseeing an outsourcing partner can show support and appreciation and help ensure the employee is not threatened by the decision to outsource.

Your needs are becoming more complicated

If you are adding services inside your practice, such as pathology or an in-house lab, that additional complexity may be a good reason to outsource billing.

Before outsourcing RCM, it’s a good idea to reevaluate your practice workflow to ensure it supports these new services, including effectively billing for them. For example, make sure your preauthorization, eligibility, and charge capture are reliable and fit smoothly into your flow. Keep in mind that your outsourced RCM partner will depend upon your internal processes to get all the information they need in a timely fashion to maximize your revenues from these new service lines.

You want more sophisticated reporting and analysis

Today’s practice management marketplace includes many advanced system options that are paired with RCM outsourcing services. If you don’t already have a practice management system that allows you to analyze your revenue cycle results to your satisfaction, outsourcing your RCM or changing providers is an opportunity to address that. Be sure your decision-making process includes a thorough evaluation of the system you’ll be using, especially if outsourcing will require you to migrate from a system that works well for your practice.

Watch for these future updates in this series:

• Making the switch: Tips for choosing a new RCM partner
• RCM is a team sport—even when outsourcing billing
• Pitfalls to avoid when moving or switching your RCM solution

Laurie Morgan, MBA is a partner and senior consultant for Capko & Morgan. Tune in to her webinar, Choosing or switching your RCM vendor: avoid pitfalls, maximize upside.