The credentialing process for large medical practices can be a long and costly process. It’s obvious that your staff lacks the experience and expertise to handle multiple physicians and providers who deliver services to your administration. Therefore, the process is likely to take forever when handled by your in-house staff.
Staff burnout in medical practice is real. Filing countless paperwork is straining and there’s a possibility of making mistakes that might lead to costly liabilities. Managing your credentialing process manually by in-house staff is your practice’s worst nightmare. Fortunately, outsourcing the task to a professional credentialing agency will come with endless benefits as you’re going to discover below.
Understanding medical credentialing
Before digging deeper into the benefits of outsourcing, you have to first understand the medical credentialing process. The government has agencies to set standard regulations requiring reviewing and verifying training, licenses, education, residency, background, and criminal record before getting hired. The Joint Commission (TJC) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) set these standards.
Therefore, credentialing is necessary for every new hire and this information requires updating in a timely manner. Your medical practice needs medical credentialing to meet government standards without wasting money and time during the process. The solution to this is outsourcing your whole process to one of the best credentialing companies.
How a credentialing service saves time and money
Use of credentialing software and proprietary databases
Your practice will save a tremendous amount of money and time when it outsources a professional credentialing agency. This has appropriate credentialing software and proprietary databases for health care services. A professional agency performs the credentialing process through primary source verification of information including:
- Sanctions
- Education
- Work history
- Board certification
- Criminal background
- DEA/CDS registration
The company proprietary database streamlines the credentialing process through cross-reference of physicians’ qualifications with those of the primary source databases. The agency will notify when the license is about to expire, expired, or requires extra certification.
Lowers administrative costs
Time is a very valuable resource that can’t be restored once lost. It’s obvious that your in-house staff can’t perform better than automated software. A professional credentialing agency uses appropriate software to mitigate this. Automated software prevents administrators from wasting valuable time they would have used to handle the tasks manually. This significantly lowers administrative costs in your medical practice.
Eliminates staff burnout
Using automated software during the credentialing doesn’t only cut costs. Relying on data centers and proprietary software prevents staff burnout. The agency usually accredited to offer a meaningful fair and rigorous medical credentialing process. This protects your patients and guarantees that your practice is safe from poor credentialing practices.
Lessens errors
A professional credentialing company relies on a database with verified records of individual health care providers. This data center should also link to other primary data sources. The combination of size, data management, and verification capability allows the credentialing agency to manage the process without errors. This will save your practice a lot of money and time.
Speeds up reimbursement cycle
Insurance companies need healthcare providers to have updated and 100 percent accurate credentials. Relying on in-house staff makes your practice prone to multiple errors. In this case, the insurance company might fail to reimburse payment until the mistakes are fixed. Taking longer to receive reimbursements greatly affects cash flow.
Fortunately, a professional credentialing agency handles the process accurately and with updated information. This eliminates chances of errors leading to getting reimbursements sooner. In-house credentialing staff might make the reimbursement cycle to last about 180 days while a professional agency might complete the process is about 90 days.
Allows your practice to grow
It’s a great idea to outsource a professional agency because your in-house staff can’t keep up with the credentialing process. Outsourcing frees up your staff time to prevent them from spending a lot of time and effort manually handling the credentialing process. Allowing professionals to handle your credentialing process allows your service time to grow.
Bottom line
Credentialing is an essential aspect of managing a medical practice. Getting this right shouldn’t come at a cost of staff burnout, delayed reimbursements, and wasting time and money. The solution is to outsource the process to a professional agency for an easy, quick, and affordable credentialing process.
