Many people ask me about working at home with their own medical billing business. It’s a field that is in high demand. As our population ages, more and more people are seeing doctors more regularly. Doctors are ordering more tests and diagnosing diseases earlier. This results in a lot of medical bills being sent to insurance companies.
Commercial insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid all have their own individual rules and guidelines on filing these insurance claims. In 2007 all providers of medical services were required to obtain NPI numbers and submit them on every claim form. This year even the forms that we file the claims on have changed.
Insurance carriers prefer that claims be submitted electronically because it saves them money on the expense of employees. Many doctors offices don’t even have computers so there is no way they are going to submit their claims electronically.
In a field with so many changes insurance billing in the individual provider’s office becomes difficult. The billing person must not only keep up with her work load of billing insurance claims and tracking payments but now must also keep up with the changes and file the claims in accordance with the new rules. Doctor’s offices are very busy places and often there is just not enough time to keep up with the billing which tends to take a back burner to the more demanding tasks.
Medical billing services take over this job for the doctors who can now concentrate the efforts of their office staff on other more immediate duties. This is often a huge relief to the doctors.
The medical billing service isn’t distracted by all the other things that go on in a doctors office and can concentrate their efforts on submitting the claims, posting the payments, billing the patients, and following up on the claim status. Many services also offer other services such as credentialing and consulting.
Usually the cost of the billing service to the provider is more than covered by the increased income brought about by better follow up on the claims. When the follow up is not done in an office, the doctor can count on losing at least 20% of his or her income to claims that are “lost”.
You can provide an invaluable service to many doctors by starting a medical billing service. It is a field that is in high demand and requires much attention to detail and can be a very lucrative business.
