5 Outsourcing Billing Services Risks In The Medical Field

Hospitals rely on their billing operations to offer patients quality services and maintain positive reputations. With that being said, outsourcing billing services is a topic worth discussing in the healthcare industry. As the owner of a healthcare organization, your main priority should be your patients. Whether you own a home healthcare business or run a well-known hospital, you need to provide your patients with top-notch care. Since your billing operations directly impact your patients, you need to consider how outsourcing such services affects them. Continue reading to learn about the outsourcing billing services risks in the medical field.

HIPAA Compliance

One of the main risks involved with outsourcing billing services is HIPAA compliance. When hospitals and other healthcare organizations outsource their billing services to another country, they risk their patients’ privacy. Hence, they increase their chances of dealing with a HIPAA security breach. After all, more people gain access to patients’ private medical records when get sent to workers overseas. Your hospital or organization would still be responsible for the security breach despite the fact that it occurred overseas. Thus, business owners who outsource billing services put their businesses at high risk.

Lack Of Control Over Employees

Another outsourcing billing services risk that hospital owners deal with is the lack of control over employees. Whether you run your medical organization or hire others to run it for you, you need to maintain complete control over your employees at all times. When you lose control, you essentially lose control of your company since your employees embody your business. If your medical office manager cannot directly supervise billing-related work, they cannot guarantee that it is being done to your institution’s standards. In turn, you lose control, making this a major outsourcing billing services risk in the healthcare industry.

Patient Dissatisfaction

When you do not have control over your employees, you also put your patients’ satisfaction levels at risk. If you cannot directly oversee your billing service work being done, your patients have no power in the matter. Patient accounting issues arise frequently in institutions that outsource their billing services. Many times, institutions lose revenue due to mistakes and patient dissatisfaction. Patients lash out when they grow dissatisfied with their healthcare treatments. These treatments can range from getting hearing aids to undergoing emergency surgeries. Unhappy patients’ peers, and sometimes even the press, find out about their negative experiences. As a result, the institutions lose their good reputations and their patients all at once. Keep this major risk in mind to avoid such an outcome.

Hidden Costs

Moreover, hidden costs typically arise when healthcare professionals outsource their billing services. Most outsourcing companies offer their services at relatively low costs in the beginning. Institutions favor the low prices and immediately jump on board, outsourcing their accounting services. They are unaware that the outsourcing companies will likely increase their prices as time goes on and as the services increase. Certain companies even charge organizations extra when they follow-up with them too often. For this reason, consider conducting your billing work in-house.

Poor Work Relationships

In addition to the above outsourcing billing services risks, poor work relationships also cause issues. When managers and business owners alike cannot build quality relationships with their employees, teams struggle to stay on the same page. In turn, communication in workplace suffers. More so, it is difficult to build trust with one another. Trust is especially crucial to maintain in medical institutions. When you cannot trust all of your workers, you cannot guarantee patients quality services. As a result, you could lose your entire company and all of your hard work. Keep this outsourcing billing services risk in mind when deciding whether to outsource or not.

If you want to retain your patients and continuously build a positive reputation, understand the outsourcing billing services risks for medical institutions. Firstly, organizations that outsource often deal with HIPAA security breaches. They also lose control over their employees since they cannot directly monitor the work they do. Patients become dissatisfied due to accounting issues that take time to resolve when workers are overseas. The hidden costs cause financial issues for institutions in the medical field as well. Lastly, outsourcing work in the medical field builds poor work relationships which puts a limit on the level of trust you can maintain in the workplace. Consider these outsourcing billing services risks for medical organizations.