Frequently Asked Questions

Practice management software generally serves as a complementary tool to an EHR system that focuses more on the administrative work in a medical practice. While an EHR software is used for clinical workflows like medical charting, e-prescribing, and things of that nature, a practice management system handles appointment scheduling, patient check-in, appointment reminders and other administrative tasks.

Practice management software is especially beneficial for medical practices that lack enough administrative staff, have large patient volumes, or simply would like to streamline their front desk workloads.

Practice management software can encompass a wide swath of features, some more useful than others depending on the practice. However, there are several key features that everyone can look for as a baseline in a practice management solution.

The first essential tool is online appointment scheduling. This one is a no-brainer, and it will cut down on long phone queues while making it easier for patients to schedule appointments.

However, it is also important that those patients show up for the appointment, so your practice management software should be able to send appointment reminders via text, phone, or email.

Practice management software also needs to make it easier for your practice to get paid. Look for a solution that lets your practice accept credit card payments and saves the card information for future appointments.

Another time-saving feature is real-time insurance eligibility checks. Cut down on phone calls with insurance companies with a tool that automatically checks a patient’s insurance details for deductibles, co-payments, and co-insurance.

There are certainly more features to look for in a practice management software, but these are essential to streamlining your front office workflows.

The best medical billing software has a robust suite of features to simplify and improve the billing process at your medical practice. 

Billing profiles are particularly effective at reducing data entry and improving coding accuracy by letting you set up your most common diagnoses and medical billing codes.

AnotherA time-saving tool is real-time insurance eligibility checks, where you can instantly check for primary or secondary insurance eligibility at any time in the appointment process. 

After the appointment, you need to ensure that you can get paid. Therefore your medical billing software must make claim submission easy by automating a daily submission cadence.

If your practice faces denials, your software should help you resolve those quickly. One way to help with this is a denials analysis tool that generates reports to indicate which services and codes are responsible for these denials. Then you can address the issues in your billing workflows.

Your medical billing software should make generating patient statements fast and easy. Statements generated on demand ensure that your patients have their bills before leaving the office.

Finally, your billing platform must have up-to-date billing codes from ICD-10, DSM5, and CPT that you can look up and plug into your patient’s chart.

Practices of any size could potentially be viable candidates to outsource their billing. Whether you choose to outsource medical billing or keep it in-house is a matter of comfort and understanding your revenue. Certain checkpoints and metrics indicate a practice should consider outsourcing billing.

The first thing to determine is whether or not your practice can afford the service. If you can afford it, and your patient and billing volume is becoming unmanageable for your staff, you should consider an outside solution to help.

Moreover, when reviewing your revenue collections, look at the number of days in AR, clean claims rate, and denials rate. These are strong indicators of the strength or weakness of your internal revenue cycle management. 

Typically, things should only be in AR for 30 to 35 days. If your practice is above that towards 50 days, then something is seriously wrong with your billing process. You should also have a clean claims rate above 85% and a denials rate below 10%. However, even if your revenue process is going smoothly, it may be worth considering outsourcing billing to provide extra bandwidth to your staff and improve your overall numbers.

One reason to keep billing in-house is the amount of control and clarity you get into your revenue. It can be difficult to trust an outside vendor with something critical to your business. That’s why you have to make transparency a high priority when looking at RCM vendors. A clear look into every step of the revenue process by a team of experienced billers and coders will make it easier to know you’re in good hands.

Medical billing software is necessary for medical practices that do all their billing in-house. The best medical billing software will streamline these workflows to reduce redundant data entry and increase productivity. With features like billing profiles, reporting dashboards, and more, your practice will be able to perform all of the necessary billing functions and have an understanding of areas in need of improvement. 

Revenue cycle management is another option for medical billing, but it outsources the billing work to a team of CPC-certified coders and medical billing experts. These billing professionals are trained to improve your clean claims rate, cut down on denials, and get your revenue on the right track.

billrMD contains over 73,000 medical billing codes found between ICD-10, CPT, and DSM5. Whether you are an optometrist, psychiatrist, family medicine provider, neurologist, or any other specialist, our robust library of billing codes will likely have the relevant billing codes for your specialty covered. However, if you are not confident in that, one of our platform experts could confirm this for you.

Cloud-based and web-based systems are just as different as they are similar. Understanding what these differences entail is crucial when choosing medical billing software.

Cloud and web systems generally diverge in their architecture. Web-based billing software requires a browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge, to use. However, don’t confuse web-based software with a website—a website only contains text, images, and videos, whereas web-based software allows you to interact and perform a specific set of functions within the platform, like scheduling, pulling up reports, and other essential tasks.

Meanwhile, the term “cloud-based” refers to the type of software architecture that eliminates the need for a browser to function. Although some cloud billing software allows for offline access, most still require an internet connection to gain full use of their key features and functionalities.

Just because cloud-based applications are often regarded as more current and technologically advanced, it doesn’t mean that they are inherently superior to web-based systems.

In fact, web-based billing software can be more advantageous in certain situations, especially for small medical practices.

For example, web-based software is more manageable and compatible with most devices. Unlike a cloud-based system that often requires you to install an application on your device, the minimum requirement for web-based systems to function is a web browser. That means you can access your medical billing software from your computer anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

On top of their cross-platform compatibility and highly deployable nature, web-based systems are also more cost-efficient. Due to its low maintenance requirements, you can save money on support and other related costs.

While two separate areas of medical practice operations, medical billing and practice management run in tangent. That’s why it’s ideal that your practice software supports both areas of your practice on one platform for better efficiency.

Web-based billing software is a suite of revenue cycle management (RCM) tools. A robust, sophisticated medical billing software should support every stage of your billing process, from eligibility verification to patient invoicing and billing, payment processing, claims management, and all other areas of your revenue cycle.

On the other hand, web-based practice management software tackles the administrative side of your operations. Anywhere from scheduling and sending appointment reminders to managing authorization and referral requests, and other essential day-to-day administrative tasks, are all within a practice management system’s wheelhouse.

Free software solutions are perfect for small medical practices that don’t want to commit to a specific practice software solution just yet.

However, many platforms claim to offer free software but ask for your credit card information before granting you access to their features. A true free medical billing software must be completely free, meaning no strings attached or hidden fees and doesn’t require your credit card details at the onset.

Scalability is one indicator of sophisticated free software that isn’t just out to rip you off. Choose a free medical billing software that you can scale as your practice grows. It should allow you to start with a FREE account while offering affordable premium packages designed to cater to the different stages of your practice’s growth.

Medical practices are hardly one-dimensional. From your clinical to front and back office workflows, running a practice involves multiple moving parts simultaneously interacting with each other.

billrMD understands that using separate systems for every area of your operations can be a nightmare. That’s why we’ve combined our web-based billing and practice management software with Practice Fusion’s EHR capabilities to give you a complete, well-balanced platform that supports every aspect of your practice’s operations.

Designed to complement each other, billrMD and Practice Fusion EHR work like one comprehensive system, creating a seamless, effortless experience with bi-directional data flow.

A single sign-on allows you to automatically unlock your billing, practice management, and EHR features in just one login. In addition, a Practice Fusion skin lets you operate billrMD with the look and feel of Practice Fusion’s user interface—it’s a level of integration that blurs the gap between the two systems.