How Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Revenue Cycle Management in the USA?
How has been the flow of revenue in your healthcare practice during the current pandemic? How has your revenue cycle management been progressing?
Every revenue cycle management company in the USA knows how the medical professionals have been seeing a decrease in patient traffic during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, it is the fear of infection that’s been keeping a lot of people away from enclosed spaces, which include doctors’ waiting rooms.
But since even before this coronavirus health crisis, many healthcare firms have been wondering about handing over their revenue cycle management to a third party. And, it’s mainly because of their displeasure with the efficiency of their current setup of RCM services in the USA. The other obvious reason has been cost.
Expenditure of Not Just Money, But Time and Effort Too
The primary reason why a lot of practices are opting to outsource medical billing is that they want to better focus on their core competencies. Outsourcing allows them to divert their staff energy away from the complexities and redundancy of billing.
From verifying insurance and entering patient demographics into the records, to submitting claims, conducting follow-ups, managing denials, and more – every task takes a different amount of time. Making employees wait on hold to confirm whether a patient is currently insured, or keep track of unpaid bills, or confirm that patients understand their financial obligations before services are rendered – it can all take a lot of their precious time.
An Option That Gives More Accuracy at Lower Price
When you pay a third party to handle your billing, it does sound expensive; but, it is in fact quite cheaper than having your in-house billing department. Opting for internal billing over revenue cycle management in the United States means that you have to pay not only the employee salaries, but also their taxes, healthcare training, as well as ancillary office costs. So, you can get your work done more accurately by billing experts, but at a lower cost.
There are a lot of factors to consider before you decide how to move forward. And clearly, the decision about whether you should outsource the billing of your healthcare practice to a third-party revenue cycle management service in the USA deserves careful consideration.
