Just like any other business, you can save time in your eye care practice by turning to a service provider. A big part of overhead costs in a business involves internal resources and inefficient billing.
Whether you’re unfamiliar to the world of outsourcing or you’re a pro, knowing the benefits that come with it will help you decide if it’s the right thing to do.
Why Are Practices Outsourcing Optometry Billing?
Remember the old saying “time is money?” This is also true when it comes to your eye practice. If you want to spend a better part of the day on patient care, then you need to avoid all distractive tasks.
One of the challenges that practices face is spending a lot of time on optometry billing. When your staff is always dealing with everyday tasks, for instance, insurance verification or outstanding claims, they are also dealing with challenging things in between seeing patients.
The optometry billing issues can easily add up, and soon your staff might have more paperwork than they can handle.
Luckily, there are professionals who specialize in billing for optometrists who can help you handle the financial twists relating to eye care. These professionals handle everything for you, giving you and your team enough time to do more important things. This way, you’ll not only save time but also money.
What are the Benefits of Outsourcing Optometry Billing?
Having that you need to set a budget aside for an optometry billing service provider, you’ll be forgiven if you’re wondering the implication this will have on your costs. However, with the right service provider, the benefits of outsourcing outweigh the costs incurred. Here are some of these benefits:
1. You Minimize Staff Expenses
Ideally, your staff won’t be involved in continual billing tasks. And since time is money, you’ll save both with a better billing partner.
What’s more, you’ll not need to hire a full-time billing staff and thus save on training costs as well as additional employee benefits.
2. You’ll Have Less Work to Do
It feels good when you leave for the day and when you come back the following morning all the billing work is completed. That’s what will happen when you outsource your optometry billing to a professional.
While you’re relaxing with your family at home, optometry billing team will be completing benefits verifications, billing, AR cleanup tasks, payment, payer rejections, among others.
3. You Minimize Insurance Follow-Ups
You surely don’t want to spend your valuable time following up messy insurance claims. While you can’t avoid aging claims completely, you can reduce them significantly by establishing a stronger billing process and a stronger team to handle that process.
In the case of rejected and denied claims, your service provider will contact insurance companies. None of your staff will have to wait on hold listening to Interactive Voice Response systems (IVRs) when they could use that time to handle more important things.
4. You Get Things Done Faster
No one wants to be left behind. When your optometry billing cycle is not running as you would like, it hurts your daily operations. Primary and secondary claims don’t get filed and as a result patient billing is delayed.
You’ll experience a significant improvement in your daily operations by outsourcing your optometry billing. You’ll be on top of things instead of being buried under a huge pile of paperwork. You can use the extra time to address other priority matters.
5. You’ll Become More Efficient
Giving more accurate cost estimates can help avoid future saving issues and significantly boost customer satisfaction.
With upfront eligibility verification, you’ll able to take the correct copayment and thus reducing billing issues. An optometry billing service can handle this task while your staff engages in other things.
6. Improve Accounts Receivable Collection
While you can research an unpaid claim for five minutes, most often it can take up to an hour. We bet none of your staff have an hour or two to spare on a day.
With an optometry billing service, you don’t have to worry about AR cleanup. They will analyze unpaid claims, review outstanding balance, verify receipt of claims, recover the amount due, and record all information into your management system.
7. You Get Paid for Your Services
While patient care is your primary focus, you also need money to keep your practice up and running.
Due to the complex role that insurance providers play, caring patients is nuanced more than a business transaction. Optometry billing professionals will help you understand how the entire billing process works to avoid claims from slipping through the cracks.
8. You Have More Time for Patients
When you’re not continually dealing with filing claims and insurance verifications, you have more time to care for patients. Optometry billing service providers free up your time so you can serve patients better.
