Reference checking and the use of an interview guide are key elements of selecting the right medical billing company for your practice. Reference checking is not difficult but it must be designed correctly.
Reference checking is certainly not the only element that must be properly executed in your medical billing company selection. It is, however, one of the more critical and it has several sub-steps that must be properly considered.
Although today's write-up is geared towards creating an effective interview guide, this is far from the only ingredient of a successful medical billing services company selection. Other critical ingredients include outlining the minimum requirements of an acceptable reference (e.g., does it need to be in your state, what specialties are acceptable, etc), deciding if you want to speak with a former client, outlining the roles of the people with whom your wish to speak (e.g., lead partner, practice administrator, day-to-day billing contact, etc), creating the interview guide, call the references, and making the final go/no-go decision.
Without a good interview guide you could easily finish your reference check process and not have gathered the right information for your final decision. So, before you start the reference calls make a list of your top hopes and fears concerning your new medical billing company. Next create a few questions that will allow you to come away from the reference check with the information you need to assess how your potential medical billing company has performed in these areas for their current clients.
Narrow questions are typically much better than broad questions for reference checks. Broad questions such as "Did you billing improve after you outsourced?" will not give you specific enough data to make an informed decision when your reference checks are completed.
Given this issue, your next task is to make the question more geared towards gathering objective facts. For instance, you might change the question above to say, ?How many hours per week did you spend before outsourcing on reviewing billing performance reports, reviewing EOBs, and reconciling your bank deposits with your billing system reports? How many hours per week do you spend on this now??
With your list of questions completed you need to put them in an easy to use form. The best approach is to print them out with about four questions spaced out on a page. This allows you to easily write the answers nest to the questions. Do not make any calls until you do a final read through of your questions and ask yourself, "will I have what I need to make a final decision if I get these answers?" If the answer is "yes", then pick up the phone and start dialing.
When you make the call make sure to confirm how long you have to speak with the individual and pace your call accordingly. You want to make sure you get through each of your questions with each of the references. If someone starts to linger too long on a single question or takes the call off on a tangent, make sure to get them back on track by letting them know you have a list of question you want to make sure you get covered during the call. End the call by thanking the person and asking for permission to call back if you have any additional questions.
One final tip: If during the reference check one of the references brings up a key issue you had not considered, add it to your interview guide and call back any references to which you have already spoken to get the missing data you need from them.
Following the process outlined above will insure that you gather the factual information required to make an informed decision about your medical billing service.
Copyright 2008 by Medical Billing Services Buying Guide.
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To read more about this topic visit Medical Insurance Billing Services Buying Guide. You'll read more about the medical billing services industry at Brad Ferth's Medical Billing Blog
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