If you’re a struggling new business, I’m sure you wish your problem was that it was growing too big. But the reality is that when you are a growing business, it can be hard to see when you are growing too fast.
The same applies to the doctor’s office or medical billing service. When you grow too fast, you run the risk of not being able to take care of your customers in the best possible way. Today we find an interesting example of this.
We register a new account today. It was a small account, but his billing was important to him. He had signed up for a billing service in April 2007 and now, in January 2008, he still hadn’t received $ .01 from an insurance company.
He periodically asked his service about the status of his claims and was assured that everything was in order. Now, nine months later, he wonders if he can stay in business.
How can you let nine months go by without a payment and not do something? That can only happen if you grow too fast and can’t take care of the details of your business. The details are essential.
Patients who have to wait hours in a waiting room to greet the doctor are not happy patients. If this happens in your office, you need to make changes and do it quickly before your practice is affected.
If documentation is required for patients to receive their workers’ compensation checks, this documentation should be completed as soon as possible. It is very important to this patient. These are the details I’m talking about.
If you already have too many patients to serve your current ones effectively, it’s time to stop accepting new patients. If you don’t, you will find that you are losing old patients as fast as you are gaining new ones.
This also applies to medical billing companies. You must do a good job with the accounts you have. The details are essential. If you are too busy posting payments to work on your aging reports, you are not paying attention to the details.
It is important to remember that whether it is a medical office or a billing service, it is still a business and must be profitable. So if you are too busy to take care of the details, you have grown too fast.
Copyright 2008 – Alice Scott