Billing processes for multi-physician internal medicine practices are significantly more complicated than billing for single physician practices. This complexity comes from multiple physician practices having different payer contracts, shared resources, high patient volume, and multiple revenue cycle inefficiencies impacting cash flow. Because of this complexity, more practice management companies are choosing to work with medical billing services that specialize in billing for multi-physician practices.

Billing, coding, and reimbursement are all uniquely complex for multi-physician internal medicine practices. Each E/M service, and billing for chronic care and preventative care, requires specific attention to detail to ensure billing and coding are done accurately. Professional medical billing services not only ensure each patient encounter is coded accurately and each claim is submitted in a timely fashion, but they facilitate effective payment tracking. This significantly decreases mistakes and increases first-pass claim acceptance.

A significant advantage to outsourcing medical billing services is that it allows practices to access clinical billing services, highly experienced medical billing staff, and state-of-the-art technology, all while avoiding the costs associated with an in-house billing staff. Each outsourced billing team is awarded use of secure cloud based billing systems, which help to reduce billing processing time by easily partnering with a practice's EHR to assist in charge capture as well as to conduct claim scrubs and payer rule monitoring to reduce claim denial rates.

In the case of multi-physician internal medicine clinics, charge entry is required to be accurate and enter on time. Errors during charge entry may give rise to unnecessary claim denials, increase time to process reimbursement, and lead to revenue loss. Practices that outsource charge entries in medical billing services manage to have charge entries done by specialists who verify documentation, adjust correct modifiers, and submit “clean” claims. This gives providers an opportunity to spend more time on patient care rather than administrative duties.

Group practices are concerned about filing denials. Good denial management medical billing services include determining the cause of the denial, making necessary corrections, resubmission of the claims, and monitoring the patterns of the denials. Good medical billing services are able to use analytics to resolve issues of repeat coding errors and issues regarding eligibility. This avoidance of delays in denial resolution enhances the collection period (days to resolve uncollected revenue) and the health of the practice financially.

In addition, outsourcing practice management provides some level of cost predictability. It is not cost effective to have in-house billing personnel; it takes time and money to cover salaries, training, software, monitoring of compliance, and upgrades to technology. The outsourcing model typically provides a “pay-for-performance” approach aligned with revenue growth of the practice. This leads to a predictable budget and cost control which promotes growth of the practice.

Similar to hospital medical billing services standards, physician practice billing services have the same benefits. Billing for services provided to physicians must comply with payer contracts, Medicare, and value-based reimbursement strategies, as do hospital services. These billing services also act as the billing compliance partner for your internal medicine group, assuring you of billing accuracy and compliance while maximizing billing revenue.  

An additional benefit of outsourcing is tailored medical billing services designed for physician groups. Each internal medicine practice is different with specific workflows, payer mixes, and specialty services. Each physician practice's billing company should customize their services for multi-physician clinics to include customized reporting, KPI dashboards, and revenue cycle management analytics to facilitate and enhance strategic evaluation.  

Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) is an area that needs to be addressed as part of the future of your practice. Without medical billing services, the challenges of managing practice revenue cycle processes are magnified. Your internal medicine group, by outsourcing medical billing services, streamlines the processes of managing practice revenue cycles while also enhancing cash collections and billing compliance.  

If your internal medicine group is experiencing rising denials, delayed reimbursements, or increasing operational costs, the time to partner with professional medical billing services is now. Outsourcing billing is more than saving money, it facilitates the ability of your internal medicine group to concentrate on patient care while billing requirements are managed by experts.