Staff is the backbone of any business, particularly service-based business like a medical practice. It is necessary that there is an adequate number of staff with proper skills required by the medical practice.

Like the clinical staff, the medical billing staff should also be trained in their duties to bring efficiency in their performance that effect directly on the medical billing services.


Your practice should have right number of medical billing staff

There are several ways to determine the right number of staff for the billing department. This may depend on the number of patient visits, volume of claims to be processed, and number of accounts that each biller has.

However, the best practice is to have an established standard to determine the accurate number of employees you will need to run your medical billing department. The standard may vary between specialties, depending on their workflow and patient visits.

According to the benchmark set by American Academy of Ophthalmic Executives (AAOE) for ophthalmology practices, cost of billing staff should be approximately 5% of your income.

Make sure your billing staff has the right skills

While advertising the position of medical biller, be very particular about SOP of the billing services and specific requirements of your specialty along with the general responsibilities.
Billing is a complex department. In order to deal effectively with insurance payers and patients, the medical biller need to be self-motivated, has an eye for details and creative enough to find problems to issues.


It is ideal to hire billers who have experience or knowledge of medical terminology and medical coding system. However, in-house training provided to the billers can be more beneficial. Well-trained billers will understand the specific workings of your practice, the patientflow and mechanism to deal with the issues faced with payers.