Are RCM Services Right for Your Practice?

Most rehab therapy practices are passionate about treating patients; after all, that’s the work therapists go to school to perform. Billing, on the other hand, is an entirely separate skill—and one most therapists aren’t always comfortable handling on their own. Fortunately, clinicians have a couple of options for handling all that headache-inducing billing work: they can hire their own in-house biller (or billing team), or they can opt to outsource all of their billing operations to an RCM service.   

The idea of handing over such a crucial part of your practice operations to an outside team can seem daunting, particularly if you’re more comfortable with everything under your control. But with billing seemingly getting more complicated by the day and staffing shortages making it hard to find the right people, there are a few compelling reasons to consider handing off the billing process to a dedicated, expert RCM service.  

You don’t have the staff to manage your billing needs. 

Rehab therapy clinics are busier than ever. As our State of Rehab Therapy report illustrates, providers are seeing more patients now than at any point in recent history. What makes that even more challenging is that the amount of administrative work that goes into each patient has increased dramatically as well. Between increased pre-authorization and documentation requirements and a rise in claims denials, the workload is increasing across the board for patient staff—and the effects are being felt in the rising burnout and turnover rates.

One way to combat the staffing challenge—and circumvent burnout issues, at least in part—is to work with RCM services with vast billing experience to handle every part of the workflow from claims submission to collections. Outsourcing your RCM allows clinicians to focus on the arduous work of patient care.    

You can’t keep up with changing payer guidelines and complex billing rules.

If you can’t keep up with the constant changes coming from commercial payers and CMS, we can’t blame you. The requirements to get paid for your services differ from payer to payer—and seemingly from week to week. Given how busy practices are these days, it’s hard to find the time to not only read every update payers are putting out but to educate staff on those changes. Despite your good faith efforts, mistakes in billing can cost your practice time and money in rework and resubmission—not to mention significant delays in getting paid.

There’s a reason people turn to professional accountants and tax prep software every year as April 15 approaches: it’s their job to know every letter of the laws and regulations, and it’s worth the money for the piece of mind that comes with knowing what you're submitting is correct. The same can be said for RCM services; you’re choosing a team with years of industry-specific experience and knowledge, one that can craft claims that avoid denials the first time and keep denials and A/R far below the industry standard. With a professional RCM team working for you, you can count on more money coming in each month without having to lift a finger—allowing you to focus on the other parts of growing your business.   

You’re struggling to collect on time—and in full. 

In today's financial environment, rehab therapy clinics must survive on the slimmest margins as Medicare cuts costs and commercial payers inflate their own profits. Practices can’t afford to forego any of the money they're owed if they want to stay in business and have a chance of growing. As WebPT’s resident billing expert and Chief Compliance Officer, John Wallace PT, MS, OCS, is fond of saying, billing is about picking up the nickels and dimes—and who better to pick those up than the people whose sole focus is getting you every penny you’re owed?  

An RCM service can help you keep denials to a minimum with a clean claims rate well above the industry average. And in those rare instances where a claim is denied the first time through, they’re responsible for denials management and any re-billing and follow-up required.  

You want a better picture of your financial operations.

As a rehab therapist, you appreciate better than most the need to understand how everything works together in concert—and the need to understand the factors determining overall health. If you're not well-versed in the business part of running a rehab therapy business, your understanding of financials may be limited to what's in the bank account at the moment. Fortunately, the right RCM service can provide you with practice management reports, scheduled account review sessions, and extensive benchmarking so you can understand how your practice is performing financially against your goals.

If you’re thinking of adding RCM services to your team, you should consider WebPT RCM. With WebPT, you’re getting a trusted business partner with unparalleled experience and insight—one that can boast a 99% clean claim submission rate, over one million claims per month, and more than $1 billion in collections posted per year. Learn how WebPT’s RCM team can make billing easy for your practice.