What's the key to patient satisfaction? An efficient billing department

Billing Buddies' Bonnie Flom penned an article on the relationship between practice success and medical billing.

Here's what you should know:

1. Although medical billers never treat patients, their performance is just as impactful.

2. Medical billers have to stay atop changing codes and compliance regulations. If billers fall behind, it could contribute to delayed or denied claims, resulting in decreased cash flow.

3. Ms. Flom argues more practices don't have the resources to hire enough billers to properly handle medical billing. Because of this inefficiency, the field experiences a high amount of turnover.

She wrote, "Medical billers are under a great deal of stress and this leads to low morale and high turnover. Hiring new staff is not only expensive and time-consuming, suddenly you have put another task on your medical billing staff's to-do list: training."

4. Ms. Flom said patients will leave a clinic if the billing is subpar. She said the power of online reviews can be detrimental to a practice.

5. She concluded, "It can be difficult to hire and retain quality medical billers. In light of the difficulties related to medical billing, it may be in a medical practice’s best interest to outsource these duties. Only then can a medical clinic be sure that the health of their clinic is not being compromised due to an overworked, understaffed billing department."

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