How Much Assistance Can You Get in Urgent Care Billing from Outsourcing?

The Various Aspects of Urgent Care billing

Due to the ambulatory nature of patients who typically visit an Urgent Care facility, one of the most critical aspects of Urgent Care billing is capturing all the requisite patient data before they leave the Center. This is usually carried out promptly at the front desk and must be done with a fair degree of accuracy and thoroughness. Apart from these, Urgent Care billing is not very different from other kinds of medical billing in its scope and complexity. Once the patient’s eligibility has been verified and all pertinent details about his or her insurance policy have been noted down for the purpose of billing afterwards, the rest of the process involves drawing up the actual claim and sending it to the insurance provider for payment.

While the above may sound like a simple affair, one can never be too careful when adding the right medical codes to the bill. Using the wrong codes, or forgetting to code comprehensively, can lead to underpayment or the claim getting returned to the sender for rectification. It is also important to remember that most insurance plans require that the patient makes a co-payment at the time they receive medical services. Typically speaking, besides this co-payment, the patient may also be responsible for any unpaid amount not satisfied by the insurance plan. These aspects need to be explained to the patient in a clear and transparent manner so that unpleasant surprises may be avoided later during the Urgent Care billing process.

Why Outsource Urgent Care Billing and What to Expect

It is evident from the above that Urgent Care billing involves a series of steps each of which needs to be completed with due diligence and attention. The question now is, how many of these can be realistically handled by an external billing partner. The answer lies in the span of capabilities of the billing company. It also depends on how much an Urgent Care practice is willing to outsource. Let’s take a closer look.

Small-sized medical billing companies are often available for taking care of specific aspects of the billing process, such as ensuring the eligibility of the patient and verifying insurance details, or coding for services provided, or following up on accounts receivable, or handling denials. However, some of the larger players in the market, who justifiably call themselves Revenue Cycle Management experts, can take care of the entire billing cycle. The choice of a billing partner, therefore, rests largely on the provider, or to be more precise, on how much he wishes to outsource and how much he wishes to retain in-house.

Whatever the choice is, outsourcing of key Urgent Care billing tasks can lead to substantial savings in operational cost and an overall streamlining of the entire revenue cycle. It has also been seen that having a dedicated and skilled billing partner working for a Practice, results in increased collections, reduced denials and an improved patient experience as it makes your facility’s resources available for actual patient care instead of remaining tied up behind the billing desk.