Using your billing company’s collection agency is not a conflict of interest.

That is unless you don’t trust that your billing provider is collecting as best as they can. If that is the case then I feel that you already have an issue that needs to be addressed.

It has always blown me away that having your medical billing company’s collection agency be the primary collector of your bad debt may be a conflict of interest.

The relationship between physician and medical billing provider is one made on trust. You are entrusting them to handle your patient information, to correctly file your claims, collect your money, and distribute your revenues. If the bond is not strong enough to hold the belief that your billing agents are effectively collecting in a timely and effective fashion, it shouldn’t be a question of whether you should use their collection agency, but whether you should be using them at all.

You should Profit Using Your Medical Billing Company’s Collection Agency

Using a collection company that is a sister company, or part of the same billing company that you currently use will increase your collection rate. Why? Because the company will have better communication with the billing provider and better availability of information.

You may not believe me, but think about the last time you tried to get access to another company’s data. Was it easy? Probably not. If you were connecting to a computer system you had to get forms filled out, approved, and then you had to have IT set up the account and you had to be trained on how to use the system. Even in a best case scenario you are looking at day or two before you can even think about accessing any data.

If you are simply requesting information over the phone or via fax, an outside collector doesn’t know your billing agencies employees or who is in charge of what data. They don’t know the company terminology. E.G. What is the difference between a claim and an invoice. To them that question may mean nothing, but to the billing agency it could be the difference between two major reports.

Reducing the amount of red tape that needs to be met in order to collect data and increase the speed of AR is your ultimate goal because it increases the likelihood of you being reimbursed for your services. So in my opinion not using your billing company’s collection agency is a conflict of interest.

- Adam M.

P.S. This post comes before our next service post that will be introducing our sister company Custom Collections Services, Inc. Many of our clients use our service coupled with another company and we have found time and again that when exceptions in the collection process have occurred they have been able to handle them quickly and responsively because of the ease of communication.

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