Physician Staff Shortage: Problems &Solutions

There is an acute shortage of medical billers and coders along with other clinical staff for physicians in the United States and the health reforms are making it even more difficult for providers to recruit experienced and well trained staff. The recent health reforms bring with them numerous changes in the way in which reimbursement is processed by insurers or payers in addition to the reforms in medical billing and coding.

Moreover, the extensive utilization of healthcare IT in the form of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Electronic Health Records (EHR) and such other technologies makes it important for physicians, hospitals and clinics to quickly adopt such changes or lose time, money, and even patients. Here are a few ways in which these hurdles can be overcome in order to ensure timely and correct reimbursements for health care providers without sacrificing the quality of care that is provided.

Training Costs
The changing face of the health care industry due to changes in medical billing and coding procedures, the migration from ICD-9 codes to ICD-10 codes, the adoption of HIPAA 5010 platform, integration and standardization of data related to health care, and the health care IT sector reforms necessitate rigorous training. This training is not just limited to medical billers and coders but is also required for nurses, assistants, and insurance companies. However, training requires a lot of time and money because of the sheer volume and complexity of codes, adoption of new health care IT reforms, and compliance of HIPAA guidelines.

By outsourcing your billing and coding requirements fully or partially to a third party vendor such as medicalbillersandcoders who can expertly implement and integrate medical billing and coding along with denial management and has the requisite training updates in the latest guidelines and codes, can substantially cut down on your training costs. The MBC consultancy experts can also motivate the physicians’ team to adopt these compliances by underlining their relevance in effective patient healthcare and RCM management.

Testing hiccups
Physicians, hospitals, payers, and medical billers and coders are required to test the new codes for HIPAA compliance in various stages. The best way to ensure that you as a health provider do not lag behind at any stage due to the inevitable testing hiccups is to delegate the responsibility to a professional third party such as medical billers and coders who can effortlessly integrate these upgrades and compliances into physicians’ system through the testing and transition phase as also after the regulation deadline, thus increasing revenue and saving time and hassle.

Technical Support
The implementation of Electronic Medical Records and Electronic Health records would also require technical support for ensuring there are no delays due to downtime of software or hardware. Many physicians and small clinics have successfully installed the required hardware or technology but have lost precious time and revenue due to system crashes and downtime. A professional medical billing and coding company can ensure that there is minimum damage due to technical glitches since they usually have dedicated professionals who can handle such situations and get the system fixed whenever there are technical difficulties.

Handling Errors
Many hospitals and health care providers have found that errors while coding and billing can lead to denied claims and loss of time as well as revenue. Moreover, the quality of patient care can drop due to this directly impacting the revenue of clinics, physicians, and hospitals. The best way to ensure that no errors are committed by the staff is to outsource the complete process of billing and coding and denial management to a company that is an expert in handling billing, coding, and other related administrative services and ample experience.

This would directly lead to reduction of errors and ensure that claims are not denied just because of wrong entries in the system. Moreover since the number of codes would increase more than six times after adopting 5010 platform makes it crucial that the billing, coding, and interaction with payers is delegated to an experienced and already trained staff instead of investing in training and testing of new codes and standards.

For more information about better solutions to physician staff shortages and professional medical billing and coding services please visit medicalbillersandcoders.com, San Francisco Medical Billing, SAN JOSE Medical Billing.