Pros and Cons to Bringing Your Physical Therapy Practice Billing In-House

Most physical therapists know nothing about billing, insurance, claims, or any of that. We know how to treat patients and educate them on prevention of re-occurance. Opening a private practice in physical or occupational therapy is challenging enough without even factoring in having to learn and figure out this crazy world of insurances. So most owners find it just easier to outsource their billing. And I don’t blame them honestly. Until now. Times have changed and I want to empower other physical therapists to realize that billing and collections really isn’t that hard if you’ve got the right systems and support in place. Like anything you do in business, if you don’t have the right support around you, you will probably be less efficient with your time and resources, overall costing you more money. And with the way outpatient physical therapy reimbursement is these days (or lack thereof), we absolutely don’t want anything costing us more money!

I’d like to weigh the pros and cons of bringing your billing in-house, and then it’s up to you to determine whether it is worth it or not.

CONS of In-house billing:

Another employee to manage, pay for, and have benefits for (if your practice elects to do that). This can be a time-consuming task that could end up costing you a lot of money if you don’t have an employee that is great.
It could be easy for an employee to write off a balance or have data entry errors, depending on what type of billing software you use.
Someone always has to stay on top of what is going on and assure processes are followed.

PROS of having billing in-house:

You’re keeping all of the money you collect and earn – this is probably the biggest one. Most outsourced billing collects and keeps a certain percentage of your collections. So the more you make, the more they take.
You are in full control of where you stand with outstanding claims and re-bills. You are able to easily go into an account and re-bill it at any time you want to. You can also see the exact dollar amount at any given point during the day for what is owed from a patient or insurance company.
The process of getting paid is quicker. When your biller completes the encounters, it’s done.
The employee(s) doing your billing are there, in your office. You don’t have to call or wait for you billing company to be open to talk to them.

Please comment on this post and share your experience with billing for your physical or occupational therapy practice. Let’s help each other out so that we can navigate through this crazy insurance-driven world together.