If you’re a struggling new business, I’m sure you wish your problem was that you were growing too big. But the reality is that when you’re dealing with a growing business, it can be hard to see when you’re growing too fast.
The same applies to both the doctor’s office and the medical billing service. When you grow too fast, you risk not being able to serve your customers in the best possible way. We found an interesting example of this today.
We registered a new account today. It was a small account, but his billing was important to him. She had signed up for a billing service in April 2007, and now, in January 2008, she had yet to receive $.01 from an insurance company.
He regularly asked his service about the status of his claims and was assured that everything was in place. Now, nine months later, she wonders if she can stay in business.
How can you let nine months go by without paying and doing nothing? That can only happen if you grow too fast and can’t take care of the details of your business. Details are critical.
Patients who have to wait hours in a waiting room for a doctor are not happy patients. If this happens in your office, you need to make changes and make them quickly before your practice suffers.
If paperwork is required for patients to receive their workers’ compensation checks, this paperwork should be completed as soon as possible. It is very important for this patient. These are the details I’m talking about.
If you already have too many patients to care for the ones you do have effectively, it’s time to stop accepting new patients. If you don’t, you’ll find that you’re losing old patients just as quickly as you’re gaining new ones.
This also applies to medical billing companies. You must do a good job with the accounts you have. Details are critical. If you’re too busy recording payments to work with your aging reports, you’re not paying attention to detail.
It is important to remember that whether you are a medical office or a billing service, you are still a business and you must make a profit. So if you’re too busy to deal with the details, you’ve grown too fast.
Copyright 2008 – Alice Scott
