Billing Software Guides

You have your own business and it?s doing well. However, you feel a little disorganized. Your accounting and billing system could use some organization. You need to find some billing software guides that will help you find the perfect software program for your business. Billing software is designed to help you keep track of customers and generate statements, invoices, and other business documents.

Billing software guides are designed to help you choose the billing software that is right for your business. When it comes to billing software, you can get as general or specialized as you need to. For example, medical billing software has special features designed to accommodate the needs of a thriving medical practice including a place to enter patient insurance information. Automotive billing software is designed to meet the needs of an auto body shop. What kind of business do you own? Is there specialized billing software designed for your type of business? If not, then you will need to choose a more generalized program.

Once you choose the billing software program that is right for you, you will need to learn how to use it. The best software program is one that is easy to learn and easy to use. If a system is too complex and confusing, it won?t have the desired effect because you may not use it. That?s not to say a learning curve will not exist or is not normal. But it shouldn?t take you too long to figure out how to use it.

Billing software guides help you choose the billing software that is right for your business. If your industry doesn?t have specialized software, as is the case with medical billing, then you will need to purchase a more generalized system. When you do find the software that is perfect for you, it will make your job so much easier.

Billing Software provides detailed information on Billing Software, VoIP Billing Software, Chiropractic Billing Software, Free Billing Software and more. Billing Software is affiliated with HIPAA Complaint Medical Billing Software

Free Billing Software

Billing software is business accounting software that helps you manage your billing. It was created to help you keep track of projects, hours worked, and what your clients owe you. You can use billing software to manage your professional services business. It automatically creates a variety of reports, so you know how much you have worked, how much to bill, and who owes you what.

Billing software was designed for service industry professionals and anyone else who provides services. There are many kinds of free billing software available on the Internet, including:

Integra Office 5.2: INTEGRA OFFICE combines a powerful time and billing system with the "ultimate scheduler." Bill formats are completely customizable. The software allows any of a client's last ten bills to be re-prepared at any time.

BS/1 Professional 3.06: BS/1 Professional is an integrated time billing and accounting system, handling accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, inventory, time billing, and sales analysis. Multi-currency features facilitate purchasing and international billing.

Excel Invoice Manager Platinum 2.1.1007: by integrating with Microsoft Excel, Excel Invoice Manager Platinum 2.1.1007 provides a true interface, not only for creating and editing invoices, but also for designing your own invoices with various tools provided by Microsoft Excel.

kBilling 1.2.11: kBilling - the ultimate software to use billing application runs on virtually any computer (even Windows 95) and is very simple to operate. Context-sensitive help and an intuitive user interface allows even the most novice computer user to invoice customers in seconds, not hours.

VOIP Call Shop Billing Software 5.1: using this system, you can even grant customers credit by taking payments before even they make their call. You have two options: bill your customers after the completion of a call (post-paid billing) and accept payment before they make a call (pre-paid billing).

InstantInvoice 3 3.4.8: InstantInvoice 3 3.4.8, an invoicing, billing and quotation software for small businesses, tracks customer payments and outstanding invoices. There is a powerful search-and-find option to find past invoices and quotes.

All of the above software runs on Windows 98, NT 4.0, 2000, ME and XP.

Billing Software provides detailed information on Billing Software, VoIP Billing Software, Chiropractic Billing Software, Free Billing Software and more. Billing Software is affliated with HIPAA Complaint Medical Billing Software

Improve Patient Loyalty With Integrated Electronic Medical Billing, Notes, And Scheduling Software

Patient Loyalty

Patient loyalty is key to continued practice success in terms of both recurring and new revenue. As patients keep returning to your practice, it maintains revenue stability and as patients refer their friends and family, your practice billing collections grow. In terms of profitability, new patient acquisition is by an order of magnitude more expensive than loyalty maintenance for an existing patient.

Time delay is a major problem of eroding patient loyalty. By the time you discover that you have a patient loyalty problem, it is typically too late to do anything about the patients who already left. Patients typical desert without saying “good bye,” and your only way to discover patient attrition is by observing lower collections and more free time on your appointment scheduler.

Frequent patient communication is the only effective way to reduce such time delay and increase the likelihood of timely loyalty problem identification and resolution. Such patient communications can revolve around any of the practice management components, starting with patient scheduling, to SOAP notes, to special health care literature, to medical billing, insurance payments, copays, and deductibles.

Patient Identification for Targeted Communications

It's convenient to view targeted communications from the patient visit perspective:

 

• Patients due for scheduled appointment or owe you payments need a reminder.
• Patients that recently had an appointment need results, interpretation, prescriptions, and follow up.
• Patients with prescriptions that are about to expire may need to schedule a visit
• Patients that have not had an appointment for long time need a reminder to schedule a checkup. A screening procedure schedule should be generated using specific combinations of procedures (CPT) and diagnoses (ICD) codes.
• Patients with chronic conditions or permanent injuries need literature about recent progress in treating their conditions
• Patients that have had a long series of appointments need progress reports
• Patients that receive good progress reports need to be solicited for referrals
• Patients with bad progress reports need special literature and special appointments
• Patients waiting in reception area need access to custom information about their specific condition.

 

To generate such lists of patients, your systems must combine scheduling, medical notes, and billing data in a single database.

Patient Communications Venue

While traditional phone and conventional mail systems are still in use, Internet is the most obvious choice for communicating with patients. A custom, HIPAA-compliant patient portal is the least expensive way to allow your patients interact with their doctor outside the clinic at their convenience and privacy. Patients can

• Review reminders and schedule appointments.
• Review visit results.
• Ask you clarifying questions.
• Request prescriptions.
• Read special literature and progress reports you sent them.
• Send you referrals.
• Review medical bills and pay invoices
• Track their medical costs

 

Active patient loyalty management based on selective patient identification for targeted communications at the patient's convenience is one of the most effective way to improve practice profitability.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com.

Outsourcing Dilemma Of Electronic Medical Billing Software And Service

Statistics show that both in-house and outsourced billing services may deliver superior or inadequate billing performance. On one hand, only 5.66% of “better-performing practices” outsource their billing. In other words, the vast majority of “better-performing practices” achieve adequate billing performance in-house. On the other hand, less than 83% of payments are paid to an average practice within the first four months since the date of service. Worse, 59% of in-house billers do not review explanations of benefits and 55% of billers have never appealed a denied claim. In other words, the average medical practice delivers almost one fifth of its services for free because in-house billing fails to provide adequate payment performance.

Can an outsourced electronic medical billing software and service improve or expedite payments and reduce costs? This article revisits key arguments for and against billing outsourcing in light of increasing complexity and regulatory scrutiny of billing processes.

 

1. Arguments FOR outsourced billing service:

    

    

   1. Improved billing performance in spite of continuously reduced fee schedules, growing billing complexity, frequent audits, and payer consolidation into larger networks
   2. Extra time and focus on patient care and/or practice development
   3. Reduced operating costs

    

   Billing performance improvement is typically measured in reduced accounts receivable, faster median payment, and reduced underpayment and denial ratios. The practice owner uses the extra time for the family, patient care, or practice development. The cost gains are typically measured in salaries and benefits of reduced billing personnel. It is important to keep in mind that a 10% improvement in overall billing quality means ten times more to the practice bottom line than a 1% reduction in billing fees. Therefore, if an outsourced billing service provider is able to significantly improve billing performance, cost reduction may be marginal in comparison to a total contribution to the practice bottom line.

    

2. Arguments AGAINST outsourced billing service:

    

    

   1. Upcoding risk
   2. Deficient follow up

    

   If the billing service charges a percentage of total collections, then, according to the upcoding argument, the service has an incentive to code a CPT code with a higher return often contradicting medical notes on hand. As the practice owner is ultimately responsible for the medical claims, such a billing service exposes the owner to upcoding felony charges. On the other hand, the practice owner with in-house billing operation pays flat salaries to the billing personnel eliminating the incentive for upcoding.

   The deficient denial followup argument is a variation of a “zero-sum argument.” It is based on an assumption that billing service provider’s capacity for a followup process is limited and clients must compete for it. A win for one client must necessarily be a loss for another. By driving such followup activity down to zero, the billing service provider wins at the expense of every one of his clients. The larger is the client base of the billing service, the more it wins, while the payments to each individual client continue to shrink because of the increasingly bad follow up.

   In the extreme case, when the electronic billing software and service provider has no ability to follow up at all (for instance, when the service is offered at excessively low prices, such as 4%), the provider ends up losing twice, first, by paying a fee for the automatically paid claims, and then, by receiving no service on underpayments and leaving major part of earned compensation to the insurer. On the other hand, the practice owner with in-house billing operation has all of its billing capacity focused on followup for a single practice and so the in-house billing service will necessarily bring better results than the outsourced service.

    

3. Counter-argument analysis

    

    

   1. Upcoding argument is irrelevant for doctors that code themselves using an electronic or even paper superbill. Next, if the biller is expected to code, then the practice owner must ensure that its compliance process protects both the practice and the billing service. The penalties for noncompliance have been steadily escalating in the recent decade and today include financial, licensure, and imprisonment aspects. A practice without a compliance process faces a higher risk of failing a random post-payment audit and paying higher penalties than a practice with a formal compliance process in place. Once a comprehensive process is implemented fully and reliably, the practice owner eliminates major risk regardless of having billing service in-house or outsourced.

       

       

   2. Measuring billing quality exposes the fallacy of zero-sum argument. If a medical practice performing in-house billing demonstrates lower percent of accounts receivable beyond 120 days than the national average (17.7%) then its billers do have better followup performance and the comparative analysis reduces to comparing total in-house costs to billing office fees. Again, since a 10% improvement in overall billing quality means ten times more to the practice bottom line than a 1% reduction in billing fees, an outsourced billing service provider charging a percentage of total collections has a larger incentive to improve overall payment performance than to sell the service to another medical practice.

 

Recent progress made by industry leaders in terms of overall billing quality and included services confirms this analysis. Aggressive upfront claim scrubbing, real-time compliance analysis, automated denial followup are just a few of activities, provided by modern Vericle-type billing software to enable continuous improvement of billing performance in step with growing scale and number of clients. Other important developments include billing workflow integration with practice management tools, including patient scheduling, electronic medical records (EMR) or SOAP notes, and real-time reporting and alert generation.

In conclusion, abstract arguments for and against outsourced electronic medical billing are pointless as both sides can be shown right or wrong depending on specific and quantitative performance measures. Practice owners must establish objective performance and compliance criteria and use them systematically and within individual practice context when addressing the question of medical billing outsourcing.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com.