Ways to Know You Need to Outsource
There are a lot of moving parts to owning and running a private practice. If you have a successful private practice you know exactly what goes into setting up a business, getting clients, paying bills, and somehow having enough money left over for your own needs and wants. The trouble is that the line between doing everything on your own schedule and finding (or even trusting) someone to do certain tasks is a little foggy. It is unclear when you need to hire and when you need to do the work yourself. As a billing company, we specialize in taking care of a particular procedure that makes your practice run. But how do you know when you need to find a biller, or any other professional for that matter?
In this blog we are going to clarify some key signposts that can help you determine whether or not you need to outsource your medical billing. You can also use these same signposts to determine whether you need to outsource another process within your practice. Ultimately, we want to give you the best guidance when it comes to running your practice, especially your medical billing.
Lack of Resources
One indicator that you need to outsource your insurance billing to another person or company is that you have a lack of resources. It might sound strange. Why would I pay to outsource a process in my company if I have a lack of resources? Underlying that question is a healthy amount of fear of not stewarding the few resources that you have. We would like to take a step back with you and look at the big picture.
You can’t afford not to outsource. What we mean by that is the tasks that are consuming your time, your most valuable asset, are the tasks that are holding you and your practice back. You have become the bottleneck in your practice and you need to open up the time to be able to grow and scale your practice. While time is your most valuable asset, the other element that might be missing is money.
When it comes to insurance billing, if you are short on money, outsourcing your insurance billing can be one of the best ways to get an influx of cash. Billing is one of those tasks that is critically important to the life of a healthcare company, but is tedious and requires focus and time. Focus and time are usually not the resources that a therapist has an abundance of, but insurance billing companies do. By outsourcing your insurance billing, or any other tedious task, you free up your focus and time in exchange for a consistent revenue stream and potential growth opportunities.
Another benefit to outsourcing your insurance billing is that most billing companies only charge after you get paid. This works like your payment processing company. They don’t get paid anything until money flows in a positive direction toward you, not away from you. This benefit means there is very little downside and a much greater upside to hiring a billing company. Lack of resources can push you to gain a lot more resources in the future.
Inability to Work On Long-Range Vision
Are you finding yourself constantly bogged down by menial tasks that could be done by someone else? Is your email overwhelming? If you are finding yourself constantly working on day-to-day tasks that are consuming your entire workday then you may need to re-organize your schedule or find somebody else to do some of those day-to-day tasks. The struggles that practice owners have is discerning which tasks to hire out for and which tasks are really critical for them to work on. However, indisputably the one task that you cannot outsource is long range vision planning for your private practice. This is your practice. This is your future. These are your clients. In order for your practice to succeed you need to be the one steering the ship where you want it to go. Ensuring that you are working on the long range vision of your business instead of working exclusively inside your business will help with making your practice a sustainable success.
Rapid Growth
If you are finding yourself in a situation where your practice is growing at an exponential rate instead of a gradual rate, you are probably finding yourself overwhelmed by everything that needs to happen. You are also probably stressed about financial health. You are probably wondering if you can even afford to outsource any of your tasks, but your rapid growth and exponential expansion demand that you become an expert at hiring the right team.
Oftentimes people want explosive growth. But what they don’t realize is that explosive growth means that you also have explosive expenses that require management. It also means that you are no longer able to do everything. Therefore, you have to be really good at outsourcing the things that need to be outsourced and keeping the things on your schedule that only you can do. Explosive growth can also mean explosive death if not managed properly.
Insurance billing is one of those tasks that is very easily outsourced and works well with whatever software system you’ve decided for your electronic healthcare needs. Insurance billing also consumes a tremendous amount of time from a practice owner and therefore the return on investment can be pretty immediate both in terms of financial return and time return.
If you are finding yourself in this position, we recommend that you reach out to our team and if we are not able to take over your billing, we will make a recommendation for somebody who might be able to so you can get in the clarity and time you need to run your practice.
Skills and Needs Are Too Far Apart
When you started your practice you probably had fewer skills than you needed to start your private practice but overtime you gained those skills. As you grow you will find that your skills or skill acquisition and the needs of your practice don’t line up anymore. Business needs can grow faster than your ability to gain the skills needed to run a business. It requires some honesty and humility to admit that you don’t have the skills needed to meet the needs of your business and instead need to find somebody who has the skill set to meet the needs of your business. This doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it actually means you’re a success. It means that you need to start to manage and run your practice from a higher level instead of a day to day level.
Insurance billing can get complicated very quickly. In some cases we have seen practices come in with over $250,000 worth of aging in a one year period. One of the reasons why the aging became a problem is that the practice owner didn’t have the skills needed to maintain the revenue cycle of the practice. If you’re finding yourself in a position where the aging report and the revenue cycle for your practice are out of control, and you don’t have the skills to maintain them then we highly recommend reaching out to a professional so you can begin the process of outsourcing this process. If you don’t have the skills to manage a high volume of data and continue to run the practice, you need to outsource your billing.
Behind on Key Tasks
Are you finding that your to-do list is continually growing without any relief? Are you finding yourself in a position where you are doing key tasks late? Are you missing deadlines for your key tasks? Do you find that you do not have time for important meetings, events, or activities in your life? These are some important questions to ask as you evaluate your schedule and as you evaluate whether or not you need to outsource tasks within your private practice.
Insurance billing is one of those areas where time can go by so fast because of the level of complexity needed to navigate the system that you can become behind on truly critical tasks in your private practice. Insurance billing is a critical task, but it is not a critical task that can only be done by the practice owner. The practice owner is a position that requires particular knowledge, experience and vision. Insurance billing can be reported to this person and should be reported up to this person in a consistent and timely manner. The practice owner can then make determination for the business once they have key performance indicators from their insurance biller.
Conclusion
We know there is a lot to take in and apply as you run your private practice. We also know that as you grow there are going to be a lot of challenges in terms of insurance billing. There are a lot of lessons to learn as you add clinicians, more clients, more payers, and potentially more locations. We are here to be a trusted partner in the growth of your practice and to provide insurance billing services that will enable you to remove any bottlenecks from your processes and systems. Please let us know how we can help you and we would love to do what we can!
