Selecting Medical Billing Services Using Smart Reference Checks

Insuring that you utilize a systematic and well designed process for reference checking will dramatically improve your success in selecting a medical billing services company. Using an interview guide is a key element of successful reference checking.

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.

An interview guide is your roadmap for the interview calls that insures you ask everything required to make a good decision. The first step in developing the interview guide is writing out the best and worst case scenarios for the potential billing company. With this in hand create a list of questions that will help you determine where along the spectrum between your two scenarios your potential medical billing service may lie.

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).

To insure you have the information you need at the end of the interview process use narrow questions such as “What were you days in AR before you outsourced and how did they change 3 months after you outsourced?” This gives you specific and actionable data.

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 critical not to allow a good meaning but talkative reference to keep you from getting all of your questions answered. Make sure they know you have a pre-determined list of questions you need to address. Find out how long they have to speak with you and keep an eye on the clock to make sure you get all of the information you need. You should leave the door open for call backs by letting references know you may need to speak with them again.

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.

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Business Financial Services

Selecting Medical Billing Services Using Smart Reference Checks