If you have a small practice, is it more profitable to hire a biller or use a billing service? If you have a biller, which claims should get priority attention? How are they doing against national and regional averages? If you have a billing service, how are they doing against national and regional averages? Which plans are decreasing referrals?, authorizations?, payments? What are the different problems you have with each insurer? Which needs your time now? Which referral sources are drying up and might need some contact? How profitable are your "profit centers"? When you consider staffing expenses? If you are advertising, should you increase or decrease it?
My point is that private practice has been a very sheltered business that is starting to have to compete. Everything was profitable, now we have to worry about making a profit while keeping our lifestyle.
Billing programs are great, but a real practice (business) management program should be using the information entered to show how we compare to benchmarks, the best ways to grow the practice, and the things that need to be changed. It should help with the compromises we have to make on where to spend our time and money managing a business.
