9 Advantages That Happen When You Outsource Optometry Billing
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The main reason any business turns to a service provider for support is simple: to save time and get paid faster. Your eye care practice is just like any other business. You have overhead costs, and a big part of that involves your internal resources and inefficient optometry billing.
Are you tired of billing headaches and the burden of filing vision plan and insurance claims? Does reducing accounts receivable (AR) and staff expenses sound appealing?
Optometry billing is a common headache for many practices, which can quickly add up on the cost scale. Whether you are considering outsourcing your optometry billing or new to the world of outsourcing these types of services, knowing the benefits will help you decide if this is the right move for your office.
Let’s explore several advantages you and your staff can experience with an improved optometry billing and revenue cycle management (RCM) process.
1. You don’t have to do all the insurance billing and collections.
Imagine leaving for the day and coming back into the office the following morning to discover that all of your billing work is completed. That’s a reality (not a myth) when you outsource your insurance billing and collections to an optometry billing provider.
While relaxing at home in the evenings, a team like Fast Pay Health is hard at work—completing insurance eligibility and benefits verification, clearinghouse and payer rejections, billing, payment posting, and accounts receivable cleanup tasks.
2. You reduce employee expenses.
When your staff is continually managing everyday billing tasks, like outstanding claims or insurance verification, they often deal with complexities in between seeing patients that often cannot be solved quickly. These optometry billing issues start to compound, and soon your staff is buried under a pile of paperwork.
Overall your staff will save time since they won’t spend so much of it on repetitive billing tasks. As mentioned previously, time is money and you will have more of both with better revenue cycle management. Eliminate the time-consuming task of patient collections by outsourcing printing and mailing patient statements.
You also won’t need to invest in a full-time billing person, including the extra employee benefits and training costs. Instead, you’ll have a more cost-effective optometry billing team to work with remotely.
“Partnering with Fast Pay Health is one of the better decisions we have made in managing our practice. Their team is a welcome extension of our practice. I used to worry about the billing at the time—now, it’s the one thing I know is being done to a large extent!” –Julie Honda, OD, Kailua-Kona, HI
3. You get ahead for a change.
Falling behind is never a good feeling for anyone. When your billing cycle isn’t running smoothly, it works like a domino effect. Primary claims don’t get filed, then secondary claims and patient billing are delayed.
Outsourcing optometry billing greatly improves your daily operations, so you feel on top of things—not buried beneath an enormous pile of paperwork. With all that extra time, other priorities can be addressed instead of ignored.
Related: 11 Optometry Medical Billing Tips for a Positive Cash Flow
4. You decrease claim rejection and denial follow-ups with insurance vendors.
If you notice more claim rejections and denials, it’s critical to focus on cash flow to stay in business. There is an unfortunate truth with messy insurance claims: 10% of messy claims can take up 90% of your time.
Aging claims happen, but you can decrease them when you have a stronger optometry billing process—and an extension of your team to help you see that process through.
Your staff doesn’t have the time to wait around listening to insurance companies' on-hold music or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems when they could be spending their time on more important things.
Related: 6 Eye Care Claim Rejections You Can Overcome
5. You work smarter with patient eligibility and benefits verification.
Providing more accurate cost estimates can significantly boost patient satisfaction and save you from future billing issues.
Insurance eligibility and benefits verification upfront ensures the correct copayment is taken, reducing billing issues from the beginning. Since your staff has enough to do, this is another task an optometry billing solution can manage.
Related: Reduce Denied Claims with Proactive Insurance Eligibility Verification
6. You have access to an eye care billing team with uninterrupted service.
Let’s say your practice is in a different time zone from insurance companies and clearinghouses you must contact regularly. That makes it even more challenging to manage your billing—leaving your staff frustrated with a problem that might take weeks or months to solve.
The Fast Pay Health team keeps operations humming along, using personalization and technology to tackle these billing obstacles.
7. You lower accounts receivable.
Researching a single unpaid claim might take five minutes, but frequently it takes an hour. Does anyone at your office have an hour or three to spare on a busy Monday? Probably not.
An optometry billing service like Fast Pay Health focuses on AR cleanup. They review outstanding balances and analyze unpaid claims, then carry out an action plan to recover the amount due, verify receipt of claims, and enter everything into your practice management system.
Related: Why is Charge Entry Critical to Medical Billing?
8. You get paid faster for your work.
Patient care is, of course, your primary focus. However, you also need to generate revenue to keep the lights on in your office. If you have a high volume with high overhead, it becomes even more imperative for you to get paid for your work.
Treating patients is much more nuanced than a business transaction because insurance companies play a complex role. An optometry billing service team helps you understand and streamline the entire billing process so confusing claims don’t slip through the cracks anymore.
9. You pay more attention to patients.
Your patients are why you and your staff come into the office every day. You didn’t become an optometrist to shuffle paperwork.
When you aren’t buried under the constant demands of insurance verification and filing claims, you can improve patient care when they walk through the front door, during their visit, and after they leave. Outsourcing optometry billing services free up your time and energy, so you can welcome and appreciate the patients you serve.
Related: Calculating ROI for Outsourcing Optometric Medical Billing and RCM
Why Practices Are Outsourcing Optometry Billing More Than Ever
Every hour of the day is valuable, and you want the majority of that time to be spent on patient care. The reality is that you have other time-consuming tasks that distract you from your patients.
Outsourcing optometry billing services allows you to delegate these tasks to a professional team, like Fast Pay Health, which specializes in the nuances of the financial twists and turns related to eye care. This improved process ultimately saves you time and money.
Ready to experience these advantages yourself? Get started today with a free practice analysis. We get paid when you get paid. There is no monthly minimum and no setup fees.
