Starting Your Own Medical Billing Service

We hear from many readers who are just starting or wanting to start their own medical billing business and have many questions to ask. Last week we heard from someone who has a start up behavioral health billing service and was asking about practice management software. She is trying to work with fill and print software and a separate insurance tracker and finding it not filling her needs.

When you are first starting your medical billing business, most of us don't have a lot of money to invest and we try to skimp where we can. The problem is that there are many things that you absolutely require to get your business going. A practice management system is one of them. A good fill and print software can be great for a small office where there aren't a lot of claims being sent to the insurance companies. But when you need to track the claims to make sure they are all paid, you need a good practice management system.

The practice management system allows you to run reports to let you know what claims are outstanding. It can also total everything for you at the end of the month which may be necessary, depending on how you charge, to bill your clients. Each claim is saved in the software and the payments are entered into the corresponding claim when they are paid. It is really a necessary tool to keep track of all your work.

Practice management software is available in a wide range of prices with a variety of options. If you are shopping for a good software, you first need to know how many computers you want to install the program on.

Multi user and multi practice systems can be confusing, but here's what you need to know. If you are the only person who will be using the software, you can get a single user. If there will be more than one person using the software at a particular time, you need a multiple user or both of you won't be able to use it at the same time.

You will need a multi practice practice management software if you plan on billing for more than one office which most billing services do. This will allow you to separate the offices so you don't have to print Dr. Smith's claims in with Dr. Jones. A good multi user, multi practice software will cost you a minimum of a few thousand dollars. Research this purchase really well because you don't want to try to change systems down the road.

Some of the other things that you will require are a fax machine and a photocopier. You will be making photocopies of any secondary and tiertary claims you file on paper. It can become expensive if you have to make very many copies on your fax machine. You will need some file cabinets to keep track of claims and eobs.

You will also have to plan on keeping your computers up to date. We try to replace one of our computers each year to make sure they will work at optimal performance.