by Lina Martinez

For many urgent care providers, they see no shortage of business, especially in trying times. But it can be hard to handle billing, to ensure that invoicing is being done correctly and that you are getting paid. Proper billing is extremely important, to ensure that you're able to pay for necessary medical equipment, keep staff paid and keep your office running. But who has time for billing hassles when you’re trying to take care of people and save lives?

Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska

Many issues with unpaid bills in the healthcare system has to do with improper billing. Taking the time to train or retrain employees and staff with proper billing processes doesn’t have to be a huge, time-consuming hassle. It’s simply a matter of learning basic processes to streamline the entire billing process right from check-in, to ensure a more efficient and thorough system that weeds out any issues and gets you your money faster. 

Some easy ways to facilitate proper billing procedures is to discuss billing upfront with the patient right at check in, or even in some cases, over the phone as they make their appointment. For patients with insurance, get as much detailed info as you can about their insurance policies and have them sign a waiver accepting financial responsibility for any copays or in the case of insurance not accepting their treatment. For uninsured patients, the same general guidelines apply. You may wish to implement sliding scale payments or a certain percentage of payment upfront for patients who are handling their own medical bills. Making sure these policies are posted upfront and that the patient is informed ahead of time is very important. 

In the case that you do send a bill for services rendered, it needs to be clear, precise and sent as soon as possible. These bills should contain detailed information with line-by-line detailed descriptions of treatments so any insurance company or collections (if it comes to that) can see what services are being paid for. The more clear and concise your invoices and bills are, the faster the insurance companies will pay them. This can be easily done with the use of ems billing services provided by a third party, specialised software can streamline the billing process by pulling insurance and patient data together to produce the correct billing figures first time, this will reduce mistakes and reduce the lead time on payments. Furthermore, the use of specialised software can free up employee time to spend on other tasks, as much as of the fine detail work will be automated to some degree, this will allow your employees to focus on providing a high quality service to their patients.

For those who run busy offices and don’t have time to train staff or hire billing employees, this makes good sense. Outsourcing to billing companies takes the entire process of collecting payments out of your hands so you can focus on providing healthcare to your patients. An urgent care billing company will take care of all billing including insurance companies, patients who handle their own payments, and send to collections if necessary. 

Billing in healthcare is a hassle, any way you look at it. In times of stress and illness, paying bills on time isn’t always a person's first priority. Nor should it be yours, when you’re in the business of taking care of people. But when you take the time to follow proper procedures in billing, give detailed invoices, keep your patients informed and outsource when necessary, you can find the entire process of healthcare billing so much easier.