Building a Sustainable DME Billing Practice

Obstacles to achieving sustainability in DME billing

For any healthcare business, billing & collections constitute a vital component in the entire scheme of affairs. It is no different for a DME (Durable Medical Equipment) business. DME billing constitutes the lifeline to its success and holds the key to sustaining operation month after month and year after year. DME billing, in itself, is a highly specialized area, and requires trained personnel, streamlined processes, and deep knowledge of billing caveats. Such stringent demands of DME billing make it a kind of process where achieving efficiency and sustainability becomes particularly difficult.

This is all the more true during times such as now when there is an acute shortage of skilled labor in the market, coupled with a prospective rise in minimum wages among healthcare workers. These equate to not only mounting difficulties in finding trained, competent DME billing personnel, but also to an imminent rise in operational cost for many healthcare providers who regularly depend on an internal staff to get their billing done.

Exploring new avenues for better sustainability

At a time when DME providers are facing the risk of having their billing operations severely compromised or, worse still, shut down the business, and when finding an alternative, more economical and sustainable means of conducting back-office billing solutions becomes imperative, strategic outsourcing emerges as the only light at the end of the tunnel.

While skeptics may wish to argue about the merits and demerits of outsourcing business processes to external, third-party personnel, professional intervention in medical billing can actually work wonders in streamlining existing processes, improving efficiency, and ensuring a better outcome on the whole. Outsourcing of DME billing, for example, spares providers the hassles of having to find trained billers and coders in the local market. They can now have ready access to hundreds of them in a matter of minutes.

Moreover, the highly competitive rates that these billers are usually available to work at, make outsourcing a remarkably sustainable mode of getting things done without unnecessarily hiking operational expenses. In short, the key to achieving sustainability in DME billing may be found outside the organization. One only needs to look at the right places. And in this era of globalization and digital connectivity, it is a really smart move for any business keen on achieving billing excellence without burning a hole in its pocket.