Let’s begin with a simple thought—you want to get on a healthy diet. The first step would be to consult a dietician, who would create a diet plan for you. The second step would be to follow it. But why pay a dietician when you can manage your own weight? After all there are a myriad of tutorials and tips available on the internet. Here’s the catch—as humans, we have distinct body compositions with different needs; other than weight management issues, you may also suffer from eating and chronic disorders such as diabetes and gastroenteritis or simply lack the time to map the effectiveness of a diet plan. That’s where a dietician can help monitor your progress and provide expert guidance; as trained professionals they are equipped with the right knowledge to help you achieve the best results.
Think of healthcare outsourcing as the dietician to healthcare professionals. Healthcare practices, at its core, focus on providing quality patient care. However, it’s common for in-house teams to get caught up in non-core business functions: front-desk administration, billing, and insurance claim settlements are some examples.
Outsourcing healthcare services lets you unburden your in-house staff, treat patients efficiently and improve their experience. It also helps tackle issues across the revenue cycle before they translate into cash flow problems.
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Healthcare Services?
There are a number of advantages to outsourcing healthcare business processes, here are a few that are vital:
Reduced Costs
Let’s imagine you do the impractical and plan a diet regime without guidance. A month later and there are no tangible benefits. You plan again, wasting additional time, effort and money. While not realizing that even though all your vegetables are boiled, some are not good for you. And the cycle repeats.
Similarly, outsourcing is a practical alternative to manage processes when a business lacks the budget to train in-house professionals.
Third-party healthcare agencies help you avoid fixed costs such as hiring, training and retention because a lot of the workforce is outsourced and on standby to serve practices as per demand. They hire trained professionals who conform to the latest standards and regulations in healthcare, to stay ahead of competitors.
Providers can customize offerings as per requirements, so you don’t have to pay for a full suite of services—if your billing process is inconsistent, you can seek help from a vendor to resolve your medical billing concerns and help drive revenue.
Avoiding Blunders
According to one report, hospitals in the US suffer an annual loss of $125 billion, primarily due to poor practices in medical billing. It’s important to closely monitor medical billing operations and make sure every single penny is accounted for.
Healthcare outsourcing providers are familiar with the latest coding sets and handling sensitive patient health information. For this reason, they can handle functions such as coding, invoicing, claim settlements, record indexing and accounts receivables.
Information Security
They stay up-to-date with evolving regulatory compliances and coding practices to leave no room for errors and claim frauds—similar to how a dietician would make sure that you never go off track with your regime.
Businesses across industries are prone to cyberattacks and data theft. The healthcare sector is no stranger to this phenomenon—in fact, it was the prime target of cyber attackers in the second quarter of 2017.
One of the core responsibilities of a healthcare practice is to not only handle patient data, but also protect it. However, your in-house medical team may overlook security and leave the vulnerabilities unpatched while attending to core business functions.
Outsourcing providers must adhere to relevant compliances and regulations by law to offer services. Two most important compliances for healthcare outsourcing partners: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and ISO 27001.
Process outsourcing has become part of the core business strategy for healthcare institutions. Outsourcing partners are helping hospitals improve patient experience, increase operational capability and maintain revenue integrity.
It’s safe to say that an increasing number of healthcare setups will soon shift to outsourcing to deliver quality patient care.
HelioNext has an impeccable record of meeting organizational expectations when it comes to healthcare outsourcing. We have worked in the industry for over 15 years, offered state-of-art infrastructure and worked with certified professionals to drive profits for healthcare businesses. Get in touch to find out how we can help scale your practice.