Should Medical Billing Companies be Afraid of EHRs?

5 Steps to New Opportunities for Medical Billing Companies

This is a guest post by my colleague Katie Matlack from Software Advice. In her post Katie writes about how medical billing companies are needed and best suited to help physicians with their Electronic Medical Records.

With the mainstreaming of electronic health records (EHRs), some medical billing service company professionals may be concerned that doctors perceive that an EHR could replace them. Given the automatic coding and error-checking features of an EHR, this fear is not without some foundation in truth.

But as more and more medical practices adopt EHRs, the reality has not been that billing service companies are phased out. In fact, billing service providers should view the commonplace EHR as an opportunity. Why? Because EHR-related assistance services represent an opening for billing services: a way to strengthening ties to their medical practice clients. In order for your billing service company to do well, follow these five steps I’ve outlined below.

Step 1: Know what EHRs DON’T offer
Educate yourself rather than looking fearfully at EHRs. If a physician you work for does hint that she is thinking of phasing out your services you should be prepared to have a rational conversation with her. For example, even the best EHRs can’t make collection calls, arrange for payment plans, obtain the right supporting documents, or pinpoint opportunities for upcoding. “The reality is that the software doesn’t replace you at all,” said Ian Gary, national sales representative for Health Fusion, an EHR vendor.

Step 2: Remember the value YOU offer
As I said in my original article on the topic: “After you establish that some parts of medical billing can only be done by a well-trained human being, the next step is to communicate to your clients that your team is in the ideal position to help them with their EHR transition. Your employees are most likely already well-versed in how their EHR system works since many billing services work with multiple EHR vendors. Moreover, who better to advise a practice than the company that is already familiar with their diagnostic codes, terminology and pain points? As Steven Tolle, Vice President of Solutions Management at EHR vendor Allscripts said in an article on the topic, “[Third-party billing companies] have the trust of physicians, and you can leverage that to expand your business.”

Step 3: Extend your services

You can offer a number of EHR-related services to clients, such as:

• On-site support on the go-live date
• Help personalizing EHR templates
• Ongoing troubleshooting support

Katie Matlack is the Medical Market Analyst for Software Advice, where she writes about medical billing software reviews. For more detail on new revenue streams for billing service companies and the final two steps in the process, please check out the original article on the Software Advice blog. Thanks for reading!