subject: Outsourcing Or Hiring A Medical Billing Officer Choice Is Yours [print this page] It has been years for physicians have been engulfed in the debate whether to outsource the medical billing to a specialized third party or to hire an independent resource for billing purposes. Although the proponents of both schools of thoughts have several arguments to present, each trying to prove their alternative to be the appropriate one, eventually it is the physician who has to decide what to choose. However, from an economic point of view, conducting a benefit costs analysis is the strategy that should serve the purpose.
Physicians are always open to make their own decisions. They can choose whether they want to hire a resource and dedicate him to billing purposed only, which of course has additional monetary and non-monetary costs or outsource their billing to a medical billing service company and pay a minimal fee, says a New Jersey based Medical Billing expert.
Majority physicians as well as health IT consultants consider outsourcing medical billing service to be the most cost effective choice today. Outsourcing the billing to a specialized third party not only frees the physician from the burden of maintaining billing operations on his own but also eliminate the possibilities of errors that could be take place as a result of negligence. It is not to say that doctors are negligent when it comes to such matter, but considering their busy routines and amount of workload, committing such mistakes might become inevitable for them. With the availability of outsourcing, physicians could simply ask a specialized medical billing company to take care of the billing operations of the practice. Although the company would charge physicians some percentage of the collectable revenue, the benefits of accruing this cost certainly outweigh the costs of managing billing operations on their own.
Advocates of in-house medical billing departments or those in favor of hiring a medical billing officer would assert that physicians could also free themselves from the aforementioned problems by simply hiring a dedicated resource. What they fail to realize is that, hiring a resource could also lead to training him on the billing operations and financial aspects of the practice. Moreover, if the individual in not, already, professionally trained, the probability of claim denials could further increase. Therefore, a strategy that was considered to alleviate physicians from unnecessary burden could actually end up pilling up the pressure and stress for them.
As mentioned above, at the end of the day it all boils down to physicians choice. If physicians think that the benefit of outsourcing medical billing to a third party outweigh the benefits associated hiring a resource for billing purposes, he should obviously chose the former, and vice versa.
