Starting a Medical Billing Business > Starting Your Own Medical Billing Business

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Michele:
We have always hired in house people.  We have an office manager and operations manager that both have the ability to work from home, but work in the office for the most part.  During COVID 19 we had our other workers work from home, but it wasn't productive.  A good amount of our work still comes in physically (at least from our local clients).  Also, our workers weren't accustomed to working from home and didn't have all of the stuff needed.  (Printer, scanner, etc)  Some of our accounts are long distance and we bill on their system.  In those cases it is possible to work completely remotely.  It really depends on your business model.  Will you be supplying the PM system?  Or will you be working out of the providers?  Is the system 100% online?  One of the PM systems we use is still server based which works great for us, but wouldn't work so well in a remote work situation. 

We started this business 25 years ago and I had my first child 18 months later, so I get why you are doing this.  My youngest child is 15, and my youngest grandchild is 4 months.  You may be able to make it work, just need to consider a few things when setting it up.   Good luck!

kristin:
In addition to my regular job as a practice manager for a podiatry office, I also work remotely for two billing companies. One since 2012, and the other since 2014. Primarily, I do my work for these remote jobs on the weekends, with some work during the week as needed. Certain things need to be in place/available for remote employees, if that is the route you want to go:

1. They need to be VERY skilled in the work they do, and need little to no guidance, with appropriate availability for your clients.

2. The clients they bill for need to have billing software that is cloud-based, or can be remotely accessed.

3. They have to have a work space in their home that is compliant with HIPAA in all ways, as well as having the needed equipment/email access, etc. (have a scanner, have fax capability/access to online faxing, printer, encrypted email, etc).

So, do your potential remote employees have all of this? And if they do, what protocols do YOU have in place to monitor them? Such as an online time clock like TSheets that breaks down how much time they spend on certain tasks. Or Monday.com where they have to account for what they are doing each day. Or checking audit trails in billing/EMR software.

Here is an example from my own experience: One of the billing companies I work for hired a new "experienced" employee to do billings, to reduce my work load for a client. I was doing the billings at a certain rate, let's say 1 minute per billing. The new employee was doing them at 5 minutes per billing. Clearly, there was an issue with the new employee. Either they didn't know what they were doing, or they did, but were milking the clock. Who do you think is still working for the billing company?

Bottom line, if you hire remotely, be smart! Hire wisely, monitor them, make sure they are HIPAA compliant.

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