A new survey looking at billing trends found that respondents hope to see better reporting functionality from their medical billing software. The research, which was conducted by LightningMD, spoke to people in a wide variety of billing roles including: third-party billers, healthcare providers, management and administration, in-house billers, office staff members and office managers.
In conducting the study, researchers looked at what the billers liked best about their job, what they found most stressful, and what they would change about their medical billing software.
When asked about parts of the job they found most stressful, about 25% said general billing/coding and collections processes were stressful, followed by denial management (19.4%), getting the right information/documentation (17.5%), working with insurance companies (15.5%), running/growing a business (11.7%), coping with being short-staffed (8.7%) and performing work tasks/staying current (5.8%).
When respondents were asked for more specifics on their general billing and coding challenges, they cited denial management (19.4%), getting the right information for patients and doctors (17.5%), and working with insurance companies/claims management. Not surprisingly, their problems with doing business with payers included waiting too long to get someone on the phone and sometimes, finding that the person they were waiting for didn’t understand what needed to be done with a denied claim.
When asked the million-dollar question (for HIT readers at least), what they would change about their medical billing software, the survey dug up a lot of discontent. While respondents cited a variety of features they’d like to see added to their current software, better reporting functionality stood out, with 26.6% of respondents naming it explicitly.
Meanwhile, there seems to be one especially big difference between what people who work at billing companies look for as opposed to those working within care facilities. Specifically, many of those who worked within the billing companies were looking for new features and functions, while those working within care facilities seemed more interested in improving their existing billing platforms.
Researchers found that while 50% of respondents wanted to add new features to the billing software, just 20% of care facilities expressed this desire. Conversely, 56% of care facilities wanted their medical billing platform to be easier to use, as opposed to just 14.7% of billing companies.
In an arguably interesting aside, just four percent of care facilities and 5.9% of billing companies were looking for better EHR integration. Considering the potential benefits of integrating claims data with other critical data sets, one would think this prospect would be more important to at least providers.
One thing to take away from this study is that is often the case, a nuts and bolts issue like the need for better reporting clearly outweighed other potentially sexy options in the minds of participants. When they suggest, as the survey seems to do, that medical billing software buyers are far more concerned about reporting improvements than the cost of the software, it’s time to jump on the problem.
