No matter what technology you deploy or the strength of your process, superior medical billing ultimately relies upon a strong billing staff. There are four key elements to creating a world-class billing team:

1) Set up a cadre of tools, individuals and policies to insure you find, hire and retain the best employees:

The leading billing organizations recruit the best staff. A dedicated, specialized HR team evaluates applicants-applicants must pass a proprietary billing testing process assessing both skill and will. This process shouldn’t be different from the recruiting process of a Fortune 500 organization.

In addition to finding great people, you must continuously develop them. Less experienced medical billers should be continually trained so they can take over more difficult assignments. All staff must be trained in the latest changes to rules and regulations relevant for billing.

Part of building a great team is removing the weakest performers and replacing them with strong performers. Such action raises the bar for everyone and leads to a stronger team. Each year disciplined and measurable reviews must be given and the weakest performers replaced.

2) Specialize the billing team: The top billing organizations’ billing team is composed of dedicated specialists in demographic data entry, charge posting, payment posting, insurance follow up, and patient collections. Each position is designed to excel in its role and is properly supervised and incentivized.

3) Invest heavily in analytical efforts: Continuous improvement of the billing process and the billing team requires significant and on-going analytical efforts. By measuring key factors about both payers and the billing process, a billing group can speed up collections, lower denials and lower the cost of the billing process.

4) Compensate your medical billing specialists based upon performance, not effort: Your billing department should succeed when the practice succeeds. Many good billing systems have been undermined by a compensation approach that does not give the medical billing team the proper motivation to doggedly and efficiently pursue the practice’s claims. Remember to insure the compensation system falls with the OIG’s guidelines.

Utilizing these concepts will allow you to assemble and grow a medical billing team that will be capable of utilizing a great medical billing process to deliver powerful results.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II