Benefits of Outsourcing Mental Health Billing Services

As a mental health provider, you likely know how stressful and time-consuming it can be to spend hours on clinical paperwork. Human error, incorrect codes and regulatory changes can all impact your revenue and make reimbursement frustrating.

Outsourcing your mental health billing services can help you maximize revenue and reduce denied claims, saving time and money. As the need for mental health treatment grows, streamlining your behavioral health revenue cycle management (RCM) can help you spend more time doing what you love — supporting your patients.

What Are Outsourced Mental Health Billing Services?

Using manual, in-house processes to complete insurance billing tasks can lead to many challenges, including:

Rejected claims from incorrect CPT codes
Meeting payer requirements
Resubmitting denied claims on time
Incomplete paperwork
Inaccurate entries

Meeting guidelines for third-party payers can be challenging to follow, especially if your in-house teams do not have the specific training needed for coding correctly. Using a compliant, comprehensive outsourced mental health billing solution can help your clinic or behavioral health practice reduce and prevent documentation errors and maximize revenue.

Today, outsourcing medical billing takes on a more modern concept. Mental health providers can access efficient and intuitive billing software as part of an existing electronic health record (EHR) system or practice management system. This process enables increased visibility and accessibility and reduces the provider workload.

Book an RCM Consultation to Learn More About Mental Health Billing Services

Understanding Behavioral Health Revenue Cycle Management

Electronic health records play an important role in optimized behavioral health revenue cycle management (RCM), which refers to the essential processes that generate revenue for your behavioral health practice, including:

Registration
Verifying benefits and eligibility
Charge capture
Coding
Billing
Claim submission
Resubmission of denied claims
Utilization review
Remittance

Maintaining a robust behavioral health RCM requires accurate billing and coding. However, manual claims, inaccurate coding, insufficient financial policies and demands of billing staff can result in poor time management and lower collection rates. Outsourcing mental health billing services can help maximize reimbursement. Companies that specialize in therapy billing services and psychiatric billing services can save you and your administrative team time when it comes to claims and collections, allowing you to prioritize providing patient care.

Because even the smallest error or lack of data can result in a denied claim, having a clearly defined behavioral health RCM process can improve your bottom line and get paid faster. If your practice does not have the training or resources to complete RCM procedures correctly and efficiently, a third-party solution can improve the financial health of your practice.

5 Benefits of Outsourcing Medical Billing Services for Mental Health Providers

Streamlining your behavioral health revenue cycle management can enhance every aspect of your operations. Here are the top advantages of outsourcing medical billing services for mental health providers.

1. Improved Efficiency

Manual billing processes for mental health services can result in poor productivity that slows down your operations. With outsourced billing services, your practice can handle larger volumes of work without hiring more staff.

An EHR software that allows you to submit electronic claims, track authorizations, auto-post remittances and generate reports in one place can drastically reduce the time you spend on billing. Instead of checking and double-checking each code and claim, you can rely on your outsourced billing services to take over the most time-consuming parts of your behavioral health RCM workflow.

Additionally, increasing behavioral health RCM efficiency makes your work more productive and valuable. The faster you submit your claims, the faster you get paid. Submitting accurate, complete claims and paperwork can result in reimbursement in a shorter period.

2. Enhanced Focus on Patient Care

Spending less time on coding and billing means you have more time to devote to your patients. With higher operational efficiency, your team can focus on high-value work, such as improving patient care and engagement. Outsourced billing services enable you to hand off your repetitive billing tasks so you can keep your attention on your clients.

Improved client satisfaction as a by-product of more attentiveness from you and other providers can help scale your practice and establish a trustworthy reputation for your clinic.

3. Reducing Administrative Burdens

Minimizing your administrative responsibility is one of the primary benefits of outsourcing medical billing. One study found that providers spend more time on administrative tasks than patient care. On average, providers spent about 60% of their time on non-patient-facing activities, including insurance claims, inbox management, charting and other non-EHR activities.

Excessive administration burdens can lead to frustration and feelings of burnout. As a mental health practitioner, you entered the field to care for patients and support them on their journey to wellness — not to spend the majority of your day on manual paperwork.

4. Reducing Documentation Time

Mental health assessments, treatment plans and therapy progress notes are integral parts of mental health services. However, handwriting notes for your sessions can quickly become tedious. Combined with monotonous billing processes, there will be even less time to devote to your patients. Fortunately, a clinically robust EHR for behavioral health practitioners can solve both of these challenges.

Selecting the right EHR software can improve your clinical notes, reduce the billing workload and meet the specific compliance needs of providers like you. Whether you're facing the challenge of meeting changing regulations, complex insurance policies or a heavy workload, EHRs can address the many facets of your behavioral health practice.

5. Maximizing Reimbursements

Manual billing processes can be error-prone, meaning you or your administrative team are likely to make a mistake that results in a denied or rejected claim. Getting paid on time depends on clean, accurate claims. However, even if your claim is promptly submitted, there's no assurance it will be approved if it's incorrect. Using outsourced mental health billing services can ensure accurate and timely billing.

A clinically robust and intuitive behavioral health EHR makes it easier to manage your billing processes without compromising important details that could get your claims denied. An automated solution also makes it easier to properly code for maximum reimbursement to enhance profitability for your services.

Partner With ICANotes for Flexible and Integrated Mental Health Billing Solutions

Therapy billing and psychiatric billing processes can take away valuable time from seeing new clients or developing effective treatment plans. Outsourcing mental health billing services facilitates more accurate, efficient and compliant workflows for your practice. With ICANotes, you can take control of your billing processes with our powerful and intuitive features.

From self-pay billing to secondary claim submission to statement customization, our EHR solution helps ensure your billing processes run smoothly. If you want to maximize your revenue, get paid faster and improve your operations, consider how our mental health billing solution can help you reach your goals. Schedule a consult to learn more about our behavioral health EHR for billing and our billing services for mental health providers.