How to Find and Choose the Best Medical Billing Company Online
October 12, 2017
Here at Valletta, we constantly strive to meet the true needs of medical providers. While not every provider shares the same set of needs, there are a few basic factors that most clinicians agree are essential to a successful billing program. To name a few:
- Collect maximum fair reimbursement
- Get rid of mistakes and inefficiencies
- Have smooth, timely patient payments (and payer reimbursement)
- Receive clear revenue cycle data for proper business evaluation
- Receive informed, responsive customer service from biller
- Be able to customize billing services to address specific needs
While there are many other factors to competent billing, most physicians share these common goals. The difficult part is figuring out how to achieve them. For those looking to outsource their revenue cycle, researching billing companies online can be a pain. How do you know if a specific company is capable or trustworthy? In the following paragraphs, we provide some tips to help you more successfully distinguish between the various types of RCM companies online.
When looking at medical billing companies on the web, you’ll find that nearly every one promises the same things. There are a lot of vague platitudes and ambiguous statistics. Even if you know what you’re looking for, it can be tough to figure out who meets your criteria. They all sort of blend together.
Plus, many medical billing companies use misleading advertising. Some exaggerate or leave out important information. Others outright deceive. How do you know who to trust?
We at Valletta have been in the industry for a long time. We have a pretty good idea of what companies are out there, and how they operate. In the following paragraphs we’ll provide you with a breakdown of the three general types of medical billing companies that you’ll find online.
We hope this will cut out some of the guesswork and help you find the RCM company you’re looking for. To be clear, this guide is meant for clinicians and staff looking specifically for medical billing services (i.e. revenue cycle management services).
The three general types of medical billing companies are:
- Software Companies (Electronic Health Record and/or Practice Management)
- Offshore Billing Companies
- True Revenue Cycle Management Companies
Software Companies
These days, there are countless EHR/PM software companies that also offer medical billing services. They usually offer lower-priced or discounted billing services as part of a bundled deal for using their software. Providers who sign up usually do so because of the low cost and ease of using one company for all the services they need. The appeal is clear. Unfortunately, the outcome usually brings disappointment.
If a company that offers billing services also sells software, it’s likely their primary business is software. The truth is many EHR/PM software companies only offer billing services as a means of attracting more clients to their software. Sure, they’re happy to differentiate their business and grow however they can, but their core objective in selling billing services is usually to find a way to lock providers into long-term software contracts (7 years in some cases).
These software companies rarely have legitimate experience in medical billing. More importantly, they often don’t adequately invest in their billing services, since their primary business and focus is software. So, even if they’ve been doing billing for a while, their work is typically mediocre because it’s not their priority. In fact, most software companies offshore the billing work to foreign countries. Plus, their services are often incomplete, meaning they don’t manage various aspects of the revenue cycle, including coding, charge entry, denied claims appeals, patient statements, and more.
So, while there are a lot of great software companies out there, it can be risky to trust them with non-software-related work, especially revenue cycle management. Their RCM rates may be lower, but the costs of low-quality billing work almost always outweigh any price-related savings.
Offshore Companies
There are a few ways to spot an offshore company. The first is to look for the company address and location information. Does the company have a U.S. office? Does the address look legitimate? Has Google verified it? Go on Google Maps. Look at the street view. Does it look like a place that a company would operate in?
Some offshore companies either don’t list an address or list a fake address to appear as though they’re a U.S. company. Some companies even go as far as to list several locations and phone numbers, without actual addresses for those other locations. The goal is to convince providers that they are a large national company, regardless of whether they actually are.
The second thing to look for is the leadership within a company. Does the company have a “Bios” page on its website? Do they provide information about who their leadership is? If not, be cautious. Some billing companies are not transparent about how they operate. If they don’t provide information about their management team, then it’s possible they are offshoring most or all of their operations.
Some companies only provide information about one or two individuals within their company, and they usually fail to provide pictures of those individuals. In fact, some fail to provide any pictures at all of their employees and/or offices on their website. Why do they do this? The most common reason for such opaque behavior is that they are offshoring their billing work.
Some billing companies have only one or two U.S. employees and contract the rest of their work overseas. With these sorts of companies comes a few unpleasant realities. They are often very lacking in the customer service department. Since the billing is done offshore, your U.S. contact is unlikely to know the specifics of your revenue cycle. This means they won’t be able to offer adequate, timely responses to your questions. Or if your billing contact is overseas, there might be issues with language barriers and subpar expertise.
The reality is these companies often try to attract clients through low prices, but fail to provide adequate services; thus, costing their clients far more money in the long run.
True Revenue Cycle Management Companies
The final category consists of true medical billing companies. These are the companies that live and breathe revenue cycle management. They typically don’t sell software. And they typically have fully-staffed U.S. billing teams. They may outsource one or two basic functions, like charge-entry, but only if it’s up to their standards and saves their clients money.
They usually have experience working with several software platforms, so their clients can use the systems they prefer. They offer comprehensive services, including credentialing, enrollment, coding, denied-claims appeals, patient statements, patient collections, patient inquiries, and data analytics. Plus, they try to customize those services to each client’s individual needs.
They offer responsive and articulate customer service, which is something only they can provide, since their billing teams are in-house and directly available to clients (and patients) who have questions or concerns.
At the end of the day, providers have to decide what’s important to them. True billing companies typically charge slightly higher rates. In that area, they can’t compete with billion-dollar software companies or offshore companies that pay their “billing staff” much less. However, time and time again, physicians lose money when taking the cheaper route. Simply put, the costs of shoddy work are almost always more than the costs of paying a higher rate for quality work. In other words, the best way to maximize net income and ROI is through accurate, reliable billing from a true revenue cycle management company, and not through low-rate alternatives.
At Valletta our sole focus is revenue cycle management. We don’t sell software and we don’t sacrifice service quality to cut our own costs. Instead, we continuously strive to provide the comprehensive, meticulous billing management that best serves the interests of clinicians. We could follow in the footsteps of our software/bargain-biller competitors, but we know that our system allows providers to collect more in net profit and enjoy greater peace of mind.
To recap, when looking for a true medical billing company online, look for the following things
- A Google-verified company address
- Executive Team Information, preferably with pictures (and if there are other pictures of the company on the site, even better)
- Client Testimonials (with real names)
- A video or two would be nice too!
