Technology Will Not Save You From Bad Medical Billing Employees

A weak medical billing staff can undermine the best technology and billing processes. Medical Billing success requires great medical billing employees. Developing a strong medical billing team is a difficult, but worthwhile effort. Here is how to make it happen:

1) Set up a cadre of tools, individuals and policies to insure you find, hire and retain the best employees:

Medical billing is a critical function and the process for finding and selecting medical billing employees must reflect the criticality of the job. You would not hire an accountant or an attorney based upon a few questions about what they liked or did not like about previous jobs, you should not hire medical billers with any less rigorous a process. Install multiple interviews and multiple testing levels. Test for billing knowledge, work style and work effort. Check references and check criminal history.

Once you have great people on the team you must develop them in order to keep them excited and make them focus on continuous improvement. Less skilled individuals should see a clear path to more responsibility and pay. All medical billers should receive training on the changes that occur each year in the medical billing field.

Part of building a great team is removing the weakest performers and replacing them with strong performers. Such action raises the bar for everyone and leads to a stronger team. Each year disciplined and measurable reviews must be given and the weakest performers replaced.

2) Specialize the billing team: The top billing organizations’ billing team is composed of dedicated specialists in demographic data entry, charge posting, payment posting, insurance follow up, and patient collections. Each position is designed to excel in its role and is properly supervised and incentivized.

3) Supply your billing team with strong data driven analysis: This rings back to the “You can’t manage what you do not measure” message. Your team cannot systematically improve their performance or your billing without in-depth measurements of how billers behave and how the billing process is working.

4) Compensate your medical billing specialists based upon performance, not effort: Your billing department should succeed when the practice succeeds. Many good billing systems have been undermined by a compensation approach that does not give the medical billing team the proper motivation to doggedly and efficiently pursue the practice’s claims. Remember to insure the compensation system falls with the OIG’s guidelines.

If you follow these guidelines you can assemble, develop and retain a world-call medical billing team. The results will be well worth the efforts of assembling the team.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II

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