Medical Billing Companies

Why use a Medical billing company verses billing medical insurance and Medicare yourself? This is a common question that I am asked. 

The answer is difficult because you need to look at the individual office.

If the office is very busy and low on staff than adding in extra work like calling medical insurances and following up on claims or rejections can be hard. Often times a phone call to the medical insurance can take several hours. Also making sure all the papers needed for submittal and follow-up can be difficult.

If the office is slow and there is an extra person then that person can afford to spend the extra time needed to deal with the medical insurance.

Switching back and forth from dental to medical insurance can be confusing and can lead to many mistakes. Many dentists do not want their staff to do both.

Medicare, and most medical insurance now require offices to file electronically. This can be done with some low cost software for under $100 a month, but still you need to learn how to do this.

In my office we use a billing service. This allows us to hire less staff and lower our overhead. It also allows us to focus on dentistry and not the medical billing.  The billing company does pre-verifications and pre-authorizations for us, and tells us what we need to do if we want to be paid. The billing company also keeps following up with claims that have not been paid or dealing with rejections.  It has made treating sleep apnea so much better.

Which billing company should you use? There are many to chose from. What you need to ask is do the handle Medicare if your a provider. How many sleep cases have they billed and how many dentists do they represent? What procedures do they have success billing for in your region. What insurances are they used to dealing with?  Not all billing companies live up to their promises and most charge to set up an account so firing them can be costly.  The one I recommend the most is GOGO Billing in AZ.  there are other good ones, but I have experience with GoGo.