It has become very challenging for laboratory practitioners to stay at a competitive edge in the dynamic healthcare market. However, by hiring a professional laboratory billing company, you can sustain your reputation as well as existence in the fast-pacing industry.
As the success of any lab practice relies on the efficiency of billing collection, compliance and follow-ups throughout the claims process. A reliable billing agency can help you handle these complicated tasks with in-depth industry knowledge and extensive experience.
If you are looking to upscale or expand your laboratory business, you should carefully choose the right lab billing experts. That helps you to yield the best dividends possible.
No doubt outsourcing always comes with huge benefits. But a wrong decision can land you in serious troubles. Therefore, you should be very careful, while choosing a lab billing company.
Sometimes, healthcare providers don’t believe in outsourcing. Because they have major concerns related to the privacy of their patients and many others. But, the reality is contrary to their thoughts. Outsourced lab billing specialists take responsibility for your administrative tasks.
They allow you to spend time with patients and other important activities that can enhance your reputation in the market. You can utilize this saved time in making useful strategies to enhance your patients’ experience and other business relations.
In addition to this, they also provide regular analytical reports. That keeps you informed about the current status of medical claims as well as revenue collections. However, while keeping in view all these benefits, if you have decided to outsource your lab billing and coding services. Then here comes the new challenge. The selection of the most suitable lab medical billing company.
You should look for the following qualities in a laboratory billing company.
- Proven Track Records
It is one of the most important factors to be present in a reliable lab billing agency. How long have they been serving as the revenue cycle management service provider?
You should collect information about projects they have completed as well as the existing or ex-clients. In order to know more about the past experience of the shortlisted billing agency, you can contact the former or current clients of that particular billing company.
Talking to the customers of a lab billing company can give you first-hand information about whether the partnership between you and the selected dependable laboratory billing company would work.
You can also read online reviews to evaluate the authenticity of a company. Furthermore, you must ask for references from your offshore lab billing experts.
In this way, you can find out more about their commitment to quality, timely submission of claims and the ability to convenient on-boarding. In addition to this, it is crucial for laboratory practitioners to find out if the selected lab medical billing company has experience in delivering the required services at the scale of your business needs.
You should never make a final decision, until you make sure that you are going to team up with the billing experts, having extensive experience in your speciality.
- Adjust With Changing Regulations
Laboratory billing and coding are at the disposal of ever-changing rules and regulations. Therefore, before hiring a billing collection agency, make sure that it conducts regular training sessions for employees.
This enables them to update either knowledge and skills as per constant evolutions in terms of new, deleted or modified billing and coding guidelines. So, laboratory practitioners should look for such a billing company that has the maximum number of certified medical billing specialists. Because off-shore billing experts also provide you with guidelines about the regulatory changes.
- Knowledge About ICD-10
As medical coding and billing is an ever-evolving environment. Therefore, a professional laboratory billing company has a dedicated task force of professional coders.
That has in-depth knowledge to prepare medical claims by using an accurate set of codes. Insurance companies don’t accept medical claims containing incorrect codes.
Accurate medical coding is not only required for optimized payment collections. But it is crucial from a compliance perspective. Some coding errors such as unbundling, upcoding and under coding can cause medical abuse and healthcare frauds.
As a result, laboratory practitioners can face legal troubles such as federal penalties, heavy fines and sometimes imprisonment.
So, in order to prevent such issues, you should make sure that off-shore medical coders have in-depth knowledge about medical coding, particularly the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10).
- HIPAA Compliance
In order to ensure the privacy of the patient’s healthcare information, you should hire a HIPAA compliant billing company. They must have advanced billing software, compliant with HITECH specifications.
Off-shore billing agencies must have innovative security systems to safeguard your confidential information from cyber attacks. So, while signing a contract with a lab medical billing agency, make sure to find out how they follow compliance rules.
You should also ask them to provide you with a list of compliance procedures they take as a company. And how they ensure each employee is following rules and regulations.
Laboratory Billings is a multi-featured and fully compliant laboratory billing company in the United States. Our billing and coding experts help healthcare providers to achieve their financial goals. Visit our website to know more about our reliable services.