How is Medical Billing Outsourcing Unique

Posted by mgsionline on April 16th, 2014

In the past, every sector carried out its non-core, allied activities needed for their business internally, which was inefficient and consuming a lot of time and money. However, once the concept of outsourcing came into effect, each sector witnessed revolutionary changes. Right from banking, finance, utilities, infrastructure, and retail to lastly healthcare - every domain started partnering with specialized service providers to outsource some of their non-core business operations. Although several sectors outsource, the healthcare domain always stands out from the rest. The reason for medical billing outsourcing being unique is that it follows certain stringent laws that not many other sectors need to follow:

Security Factors: The first and the foremost requirement that makes medical billing outsourcing unique is the security factor. Gone are the days when industrial sectors outsourced the not-so important operations to service providers. A survey conducted by a software development magazine in October 2013 found that even sensitive data, though not a part of the core operations, is being outsourced to carry out certain processes. Keeping this in mind, the healthcare domain created various laws and put into effect several stringent curbs. For instance, the security measures incorporated by the Retail or Utilities sectors may not be as strict as the security measures incorporated by the healthcare domain.

• HIPAA Act: Information security is the top priority for medical billing and collections outsourcing. To ensure data security while outsourcing medical billing, the HIPAA rule was introduced. Securing patient information, signing a mutual confidentiality agreement, establishing secured VPN tunnels, and using secure FTP for document transfer are some of the salient features covered under the HIPAA guidelines.
• HITECH Act: The recently introduced HITECH Act along with the HIPAA Act has restricted the use and disclosure of PHI. FTP sharing, email transfer, and faxing are highly secured under these stringent Acts.

Cost Factor: Be it any sector,cost is one factor that rises invariably. Keeping the inflating costs under control is the toughest challenge and not many sectors succeed in doing so. However, the medical billing and collections outsourcing domain has taken special measures to stabilize the rising healthcare costs. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has brought various reforms in the domain to curb the cost of healthcare delivery.

Healthcare Billing: The medical billing outsourcing domainis a very conservative sector that has greatly evolved in the recent years. Medical reforms like the 5010 format adoption, Health insurance exchanges, payment models based on outcomes are molding the medical billing outsourcing segment into a better and efficient sector. Other sectors have not witnessed such remarkable changes in recent times and this makes the healthcare domain unique.

It is these unique factors that encourage Providers to outsource medical billing and collections. Choosing the right outsourced medical billing company is very important. MGSI is a reputed and a highly-experienced company that Providers can rely on completely.

About MGSI:

MGSI is a Florida-based, national medical billing outsourcing company that has more than 20 years of experience in providing uncompromised physician billing solutions. Providers can rely on this company unconditionally as it takes extreme measures to safeguard patient information while delivering the best value and savings for Healthcare Providers and Facilities. To learn more details, log on to www.mgsionline.com