No matter what technology you deploy or the strength of your process, superior medical billing ultimately relies upon a strong billing staff. There are four key elements to creating a world-class billing team:

1) Set up a cadre of tools, individuals and policies to insure you find, hire and retain the best employees:

As was mentioned above, great medical billing requires great medical billers - no matter what system you have. Finding these individuals typically require4s resources dedicated to identifying and screening potential billers for your team. The process should include multiple levels of testing and should reflect the importance of the position. These people will determine if you have cash to pay your bills and yourself.

The leading billing organizations train to develop desired quality. Junior staff members must pass demanding training programs-junior team members are developed into billers, capable of following the measured and monitored billing process. In addition, staff is trained throughout the year in latest payer rules, follow-up techniques and compliance guidelines. A dedicated Compliance Officer is responsible for all additional HIPAA and OIG training.

The best staff is retained; weak staff released. The billing organization’s staff is evaluated every year to assure proper development and progress. Evaluations are based on tangible, measurable targets and quality indicators. Best performers are properly rewarded and the lowest 10% of performers are asked to leave. This should be done methodically in an effort to continuously improve the quality of billing staff.

2) Focus your team members: The best medical billing processes are designed to allow individuals to specialize in specific areas such as charge posting, insurance follow-up or payment posting. Such specialization allows the individuals to become true experts capable of spotting issues quickly that billers spending their time performing multiple tasks might miss.

3) Provide the staff with solid analytics support: Besides providing the clients with continuous practice analytics focused on clients’ practice improvements (coding, contracting, profitability, marketing, etc) , the leading billing organizations’ Analytics Group should offer strong analytics support to the billing staff. The Analytics Group should trend and measure payers response times, rejection trends, payment rates, and other key performance indicators in order to properly focus the billing staff’s efforts. They should also measure various elements of the internal billing process for continuous improvements.

4) Compensate your medical billing specialists based upon performance, not effort: Your billing department should succeed when the practice succeeds. Many good billing systems have been undermined by a compensation approach that does not give the medical billing team the proper motivation to doggedly and efficiently pursue the practice’s claims. Remember to insure the compensation system falls with the OIG’s guidelines.

If you follow these guidelines you can assemble, develop and retain a world-call medical billing team. The results will be well worth the efforts of assembling the team.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II