How much do verification of benefits cost your physical therapy clinic?
Most clinics outsource their billing since it is more cost effective and they usually dont have the expertise in house. However, verifications are generally done in house by the front desk. There are a variety of reasons why clinics keep these in house but the largest one being that outside billers normally don’t offer these services. Therefore clinics have their staff do them.
One Body offers verification of benefits services to physical therapy and chiropractic clinics at $5/verification. We are the most cost effective, most complete and most accurate service out there. We partner with outside billers and clinics to offer our services and help take on the burden of doing verifications.
We are always asked by clinic owners to help them do a cost analysis of outsourcing vs. doing VOBs in house. Below is the cost breakdown assuming that an average small clinic does 25 VOBs per month.
Cost associated with outsourcing:
Cost per verification: $5
Total Cost of VOBs per month=$125
Cost associated with doing VOBs in-house:
Cost per verification: $13.80
Total Cost of VOBs per month = $345
*Hourly rate of your front desk staff: $23/hour
*Hours spent per week on VOBs: 15
As you can see outsourcing is over 60% cheaper than doing the VOBs in house. But apart from this cost analysis, there are many other considerations to take into account as you are deciding whether to outsource or not.
Staff Happiness
Front desk staff don’t have enough time in the day to do everything they need to do to help you run your clinic. They need to make sure to welcome patients, collect the right amounts from the patients pre-visit, collect insurance information from prospective patients, call doctors for referrals, call patients to confirm their appointments and call patients who don’t have an upcoming appointment in order to help them book another appointment. The two tasks they hate the most are (1) interpreting an online verification to figure out patient responsibility and (2) having to wait on hold for a payer and talking to a rep in order to try and verify benefits. Verifying benefits is one of the most frustrating and anxiety causing tasks given to the front desk. There is a lot of fear around not getting reimbursed from the payer due an error on their parts. By outsourcing verifications, you staff will be less stressed, happier and have more time to focus on patient experience.
Accuracy of VOBs
Interpreting a VOB is a science. Speaking to a rep when calling a payor and actually getting the responses you need is an art. Both taks take a lot of practice, dedication and experience. By outsourcing your VOBs, you are giving this task to experts who call payers and read VOBs all day long. The accuracy of your VOBs should go up in a significant way.
Decrease in claim denials
Claim denials happen for 2 reasons: (1) provider error or (2) payer error. For (2), these are hard to fiix up front. Many insurance companies incorrectly deny claims and make you jump through hoops in order to dispute the denial and get reimbursed. However, (1) is fully in your control. You must make sure that you are doing preauthorization and verification of benefits accurately. If you do, it could save you and your biller a lot of headaches in the future. If verification of benefits are done correctly and comprehensively, your clinic will know when to get preauth, what the visit limit is and what the patient responsibility is with certainty.
Increase in revenue
By having your front desk focus on patients, they should be able to help book more appointments with existing patients because they will have more time to follow up with them. This will naturally increase your revenue. In addition, having less claim denials due to provider errors with respect to VOBs and preauths, your clinic’s revenue should increase.
In the end, it is up to you to see what is best for your clinic. If you have any questions or comments on this article about cost estimation, please email hello@onebodywellness.com