Onboarding a new practice: A guide for medical billing companies
Speed up the onboarding process for your new practice clients and make a strong first impression with tips from our guide.
At a Glance
- Comprehensive data collection during onboarding streamlines future billing processes and reduces claim rejections
- Clear documentation of service locations and provider credentials is crucial for accurate insurance claims
- Regular assessment and customization of onboarding forms helps maintain efficient client relationships and optimize revenue cycle management
Whether you’re starting a new medical billing company or expanding your business, first impressions matter. How you handle medical billing onboarding with a new practice sets the tone for the rest of your client relationship.
Effective onboarding demonstrates your expertise and commitment to your clients while setting them up for successful billing and claims processing. Think of the process as an early opportunity to lay the foundation for a long-lasting partnership between your team and the practice.
“Effective onboarding demonstrates your expertise and commitment to your clients while setting them up for successful billing and claims processing.”
One vital component to delivering a stellar onboarding experience is how you collect requisite and essential practice information from new clients. Gathering accurate and complete details in one simple document allows you to onboard practices faster and minimize follow-up. We’ve created this guide to help billing companies streamline the onboarding process so practices can spend more time on what matters most: their patients.
Practice information
Collecting accurate practice information is essential for setting up the correct billing and claims processes. This is the primary data that establishes the practice’s identity within your system. Accurate practice information simplifies recordkeeping and provides consistency across all transactions.
Critical practice information includes:
- Practice name
- Main office contact
- Tax ID
- Group NPI
- Practice address (with 9-digit zip)
- Pay-to-billing address
Review this information before concluding practice onboarding to ensure seamless communication with payers and minimize administrative errors and delays.
Service locations
Because insurance claims require the correct service site, capturing all service locations is crucial to avoid unnecessary rejections. For each location, collect:
- Site name
- Complete address
- Any unique identifiers
This data helps you manage multi-location practices, track site-specific metrics, and ensure claims are sent to the right payers.
Provider details
Collecting individual provider information ensures that each clinician at the practice has appropriate credentials, helps optimize billing, and simplifies payer processing.
Provider data to capture during onboarding includes:
- Provider name
- NPI
- EIN/SSN
- Email address
Having provider information accessible helps billing companies reduce the chance of claims rejection by boosting claims accuracy and facilitating direct provider communication regarding claim inquiries.
Additional medical billing onboarding information
Collecting additional data during onboarding guarantees that, if needed, detailed information will be easily accessible. Further information also supports billing companies in customizing processes for the specific needs of each individual practice.
Recommendations for additional information capture:
- Contracted insurances: Allows you to implement specific payer rules and avoid out-of-network issues
- Payer websites: Can streamline eligibility verification, claim tracking, and the appeals process
- PTAN (provider transaction access number): Speeds up Medicare billing
- Fee schedule: Provides accurate practice pricing
- Self-pay fee schedule: Helps manage collections for self-pay patients
- Financial policy for no-shows: Enables collection of fees or adjustments as directed by the practice for missed appointments
- Provider-specific claim overrides: Allows for efficient processing of provider-specific fee adjustments
- CLIA certification: Ensures proper claims submission for lab-service billing
- For ERA/EFT, bank letter or voided check with W9: Ensures electronic payments meet payer requirements and go directly to the practice’s designated account
Medical billing onboarding tips
Here are a few tips to enhance your medical billing onboarding process to make it as smooth as possible for new practices:
- Ask practices to compile information ahead of time
- Customize forms to capture the information required for different types of practices
- Follow up promptly on missing details to keep the process on track
- Regularly assess your onboarding process to identify areas for improvement
Use these onboarding strategies to collect comprehensive, practice-specific information. Investing in meticulous data collection throughout onboarding will pay off in the near and long term, helping to prioritize precision and consistency, accelerate payment timelines, prevent errors and rejections, and enhance the new client experience. Robust onboarding establishes clear communication with new practices, supporting a healthy and mutually beneficial working relationship.
To gather the complete details above in one simple document, access our downloadable onboarding guide here.
Tebra’s medical billing software helps medical billing companies efficiently manage billing and insurance operations for their clients by automating workflows, streamlining revenue collection, and more. Schedule a product demo to learn more.
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