A new report form Black Book shows more physicians are outsourcing revenue cycle management than before.
The survey includes findings from 2,000 independent physician practices and 200 hospital-based physician practices. The survey showed:
1. Profit margins are impacted negatively by the traditional patient billing solutions; currently around 59 percent of medical providers and 86 percent of hospitals have plans to implement backend efforts to process and reconcile bills by this time next year.
2. RCM outsourcing and extended business office services are expected to report a 42 percent overall growth rate from the fourth quarter of this year through the first quarter of 2019.
3. Around 90 percent of small practices are unprepared financially and technologically for implementing value-driven care, among the physicians polled. However, around 88 percent of groups of 100 practitioners or more are implementing partial or full managed business office services.
4. There were 96 percent of the practice leaders that reported inefficient billing processes. However, 82 percent of new outsourcing business office services clients since the third quarter of 2015 report fewer rejected claims and less time to receive payments from a payer within the first two months of outsourcing.
5. Almost all — 97 percent of independent group and solo practices — report high business staff turnover; 83 percent of hospital-based physicians report issues recruiting business office staff with experience in ICD-10, value-based care, risk contracting and MACRA. However, staffing concerns fell "off their radar" after outsourcing contracts among 81 percent of providers newly implementing outsourcing.
6. There were 95 percent of the practices that had fewer than five physicians who were "not tech savvy."
7. All of the 224 "new" physicians participating in the survey sought alternatives to office financial and staff management as they launched their practice.
8. A majority — 77 percent — of physicians feel they need to find additional direct patient care time that is currently taken up by business office-related issues.