Save Time: A Benefit of Outsourcing your Mental Health or Counselor Billing
Any mental health professional who has spent time doing their own mental health or counselor billing knows that it is very time
consuming. Some mental health professionals have become so fed up with the time and hassle involved in filing insurance claims that they
try to establish a cash practice and not accept insurance.
However, a cash practice is often not the ideal solution that coaches who give seminars on getting cash clients make it
out to be. Establishing a cash practice requires far more time and money spent on marketing than a traditional mental health practice that
accepts insurance reimbursement. Cash practices typically accept lower fees in order to work with the clients they want. Establishing
a cash practice also limits the type of clients and problems a mental health professional can see-- ruling out many areas of practice as
unpractical and creating practices with little variety.
In my opinion the best approach to this problem is take a "middle ground" approach, not going to the extreme of running a
cash practice or of one that his heavily dependent on managed care. There are some insurance panels that pay so little and require
so much paperwork of the clinician that they are not worth being involved with. However, there are other insurance companies that
pay much higher rates and require little paperwork, except for the time consuming medical billing that can be outsourced.
It does require someone's time to enter patient information in a billing system and file claims, but the most time consuming part
of the counselor billing process is finding out about insurance benefits and following up, refiling, or appealing claims which are
denied. All of these time consuming aspects of counselor billing can be outsourced. An experienced medical biller with an
efficient system of obtaining the information from the clinician can save a mental health professional many, many hours of tedious work.
How much time do you spend on mental health or counselor billing?
Consider these activities:
How much time do you spend on the phone per month doing insurance related things that could be done by someone else?
How much time do you spend buying the supplies or maintaining the equipment or software needed? Buying printer ink?
Shredding forms with mistakes, etc?
How much time do you spend reading updates from insurance companies, trying to keep up with insurance changes related to NPI
numbers, HIPAA, etc?
How much time do you spend on hold waiting for insurance company staff to talk to you?
How much time do you spend training and retraining your own staff?
How much time do you spend on paperwork that could be done by someone else?
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