How to Ease HME Billing Worries

The Current State of HME Billing

Seldom has it been more difficult for HME (Home Medical Equipment) providers to sustain a full billing division in their office without hurting their profitability. The current rise in prices, thanks to the raging inflation across the U.S., which is considered by the financial pundits as among the fastest in the past 40 years, is making things extremely difficult for businesses. The struggle to maintain the minimum profitability is on an all time high.

To add to the crisis, there is an acute labor shortage that is making things worse. Speaking of HME billing, when it comes to finding skilled medical billers and coders, there is an alarming lack of adequate resources in the market. Even if one is fortunate enough to find a few, their salaries are sure to surpass the allocated budget.

It is easy to see then why recruiting and maintaining an internal team of billers and coders is such an expansive proposition for most health care providers these days. HME billing is no different either. But there must be a way out of the mess. Oh yes, there sure is! Let’s find out.

The Solution We’ve Been Waiting For!

The answer lies in strategic outsourcing of key HME billing tasks to specialized, third-party service providers. These vendors, by virtue of the fact that they are usually located offshore and work on a remote model, are able to provide all the billing support you need at a price that is remarkably lower than the U.S. domestic market. Most of them will be available to work at a fixed hourly rate, or at a certain percentage of the total collections they are successful at generating for you. The latter is a win-win situation where the vendors get paid only if you get paid.

The list of benefits, however, doesn’t stop here. A major advantage that providers enjoy upon engaging a specialized, third-party billing expert is an overall improvement in the rate of collections and a general streamlining of the revenue cycle. Denial rates drop sharply, more bills get passed in unit time and the rate of collections increases. And these are the kind of benefits that will surely excite any HME provider. So, if you are seriously worried about a drooping collection rate and escalating operational cost, outsourcing your billing operations is an option that you just cannot afford to ignore.