The time between when a claim is sent out from your office to the time you receive a reimbursement for that claim varies from practice to practice. You might have noticed competitors managing the process swiftly and efficiently, and getting their money faster in the process. There are two ways by which you can do the same; a huge billing department with as big a payroll or via outsourcing your billing service to professional billing companies.



By outsourcing, you can still maximize reimbursements without the added cost of allotting lavish budgets to your billing department. The article will give you an overview of the claim submission process after which you will have a better understanding of the benefits of outsourcing.
   
With in-house billing, once you code and document a patient’s visit, the claims are sent to the insurance carrier or Medicare for reimbursement. The process can take approximately 3 to 6 weeks.  
However, with outsourcing, the process will be shortened to just a couple of weeks. Additionally, your patient information is just as well protected, if not more.

Here’s how the process will work

First is the transmission of claims (either electronic or paper) for coding to the outsourcing company. The billing company will enter and recheck your claims for errors before transmitting batch orders.
The batch orders are sent either to a clearinghouse or directly to the insurance carrier. The clearinghouses convert the data into a standard format before sending it to the carrier for processing. 
The clearinghouse helps identify any medical coding errors and results in the amount of claims delayed due to errors falling to almost nil.

When the carrier gets the claim, it issues a receipt of conformation for claim tracking. Receiving a reimbursement via electronic claim filling usually takes around two weeks after which you receive a reimbursement check and an Explanation of Benefits (EOB).


Furthermore, you can always find out the status of any claim from the outsourcing company. And without worrying about your practice’s billing, you can focus more on your patients as the billing process is in the hands of competent and experienced professionals.