Medical Billing ClearinghouseQuite simply put, a medical billing clearinghouse is an electronic system of facilitating claims applications. This pertains to the claims that the patients make to the insurance companies for the healthcare services they have availed of. There are 2,200 insurance providers in the US and there are 5 to 6 million healthcare providers with licenses operating within the country. Naturally, this translates into a barrage of claims applications even on a daily basis. Also, since most of these claims applications need to travel across the 50 states, the situation is nothing short of chaos. It does cause several problems to all the parties involved - the healthcare providers, the insurance companies and the patients. If there are errors, the claims applications will return and then the re-submittal process will take a further toll on everything. A medical billing clearinghouse ensures that the entire process is streamlined and moves swiftly. There are naturally advantages of going through such online electronc collections systems. Things move faster and there tend to be less mistakes. Also, it reduces the need for intermediary agents and thus reduces procedural costs. Here we see some of the advantages that doctors and other healthcare providers get by using electronic clearinghouses for their claims purposes. 1. Being electronic, the system saves a lot of time. If a patient is already on the record, there is no need to key in most part of their identifying data again. 2. This is a bulk process that allow submission of all claim applications at one go, further reducing time. 3. Mostly, these are convenient solutions. The healthcare providers do not need to use different systems to handle different providers. They can do all your claim submissions through a single interface. 4. Much of the paperwork is reduced. Needless to say, there are no need of a lot of investment in stamps and envelopes. 5. The reimbursement period is definitely shortened, sometimes as little as 10 days. 6. Being electronic, it makes the entire system much accurate. Compliance with the insurance company rules of claim submission are checked instantaneously and reported. In the manual submissions modes used earlier, this could take several weeks with the application bouncing back and calling for a re-submission with the errors fixed. 7. Since errors are almost nipped in the bud, it leads to more accepted claims. 8. There is no need to wait upon the insurance providers. The system is automatic and the insurance companies automatically become aware of the application. The best part of using a medical billing clearinghouse makes things much more nontechnical. If the healthcare provider is making individual submissions to various medical companies, there would definitely be a need to learn their various software applications for making the claims. However, by using the clearinghouse, there is just one interface that needs to be learnt. And there are no degrees from colleges or special certificate needed to learn this simple system. Costs are definitely saved too. If using a medical billing clearinghouse, the healthcare providers do not need to spend on medical billing workers. They can do the claims applications themselves and save costs. |