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Maintaining a successful healthcare organization requires quality patient care while keeping costs low. Outsourcing healthcare business processes is a great way to maintain and grow a thriving medical facility.
This article explores healthcare BPO, its meaning, and its function. It also discusses the benefits of outsourcing and common medical BPO services.
What Is the Meaning of Healthcare BPO?
Healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) is when a medical organization contracts with a third-party service provider to perform medical business functions. Outsourced activities include administrative work, among many others.
Medical BPO service providers are hired so that time-consuming activities can be outsourced. This enables medical providers and their staff to concentrate on patient care.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must keep up with the rising demand for exceptional customer experience and digital-first touchpoints. They must move from reactive care to a seamless patient-doctor interaction and a proactive healthcare experience. Hiring a medical BPO service provider can help healthcare facilities do just that.
Common Healthcare BPO Services
Medical outsourcing covers services that are both clinical and non-clinical. The healthcare BPO industry manages various activities, from revenue cycle management to data processing. These activities can be overwhelming for a healthcare facility and can detract from its focus on patients.
Determine which areas of your healthcare operations can use the help of a third-party service provider. Conduct a needs assessment to ensure you make the right investment decisions.
Non-clinical services you can outsource to an external provider include:
Medical Coding and Billing
Hospitals deal with thousands of healthcare records daily that require coding and billing. A lack of proper knowledge and skills can lead to significant errors and delays in encoding patient records, creating bills, and processing insurance claims.
Healthcare BPO helps prevent coding and billing hiccups and expedites billing and insurance processes. Service providers specializing in the medical industry undergo rigorous training to obtain the necessary skills to perform these tasks accurately and efficiently.
Outsourcing medical coding and billing lets healthcare providers concentrate on their patients’ needs. They also have more time to research and develop treatments to improve their healthcare services.
Data Processing and Management Services
Data management involves mining, cleansing, processing, converting, and entering information from one location to another. It also includes product information management.
Healthcare providers extract and process large volumes of data daily. They process information such as:
- Bills payment record
- Patient insurance details
- Patient diagnosis
- Test and lab reports
- Prescriptions
- Drug inventory
A healthcare BPO company helps you automate these tasks to avoid errors that lead to inaccurate decisions for healthcare practitioners and decision-makers.
Claims Processing
Processing insurance claims is one of the medical industry’s most vital activities. Healthcare providers must submit accurate and error-free medical claims to insurance carriers. However, maintaining every claim’s accuracy can be challenging as the count starts going up. .
Outsourcing insurance claims processing to a reputable healthcare BPO provider for closer monitoring is an excellent decision. The service provider processes volumes of medical claims, given their larger manpower and advanced resources.
IT Services
Running your healthcare facility on legacy systems prevents you from achieving optimal capacity. In addition to slow processes, traditional systems stop you from delivering an exceptional patient experience. Lastly, older systems are a risk to your data privacy.
Consider information technology outsourcing if you have difficulty embracing digital transformation due to limited employees and budget constraints. Partnering with a BPO provider lets you work with talented IT professionals for a fraction of the cost.
Patient Care
Unique customer experiences leave a lasting positive impact on your company’s bottom line. Similarly, an exceptional patient experience improves your brand image and cash flow.
Consider outsourcing a portion of your patient care, such as your organization’s contact center. This can boost your facility’s performance and deliver faster response and resolution.
The demand for immediate response is rising. A report from Salesforce noted that 68% of medical consumers expect facilities to engage with them in real time. Stand out from the competition by partnering with an outsourcing vendor with omnichannel support.
Medical Transcription
Medical transcription involves transcribing audio or video files into text formats. Although medical transcription seems like a simple task, it can be quite challenging. Transcriptionists unfamiliar with medical jargon have difficulty deciphering what the doctor is saying.
Medical transcription tends to be time-consuming and labor-intensive, making it a good function to outsource.
When you’re in the market for a BPO provider, choose one with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance to ensure the confidentiality of patient information.
A word of advice: Start with areas where you have little experience, such as non-clinical tasks, and keep your specialization in-house. Your patients’ experience should come before everything. Outsourcing only fills in the gaps in your operations and supplements your existing services.
Why Should You Consider Outsourcing?
Financial uncertainty is the main reason healthcare facilities should consider outsourcing. Some hospitals don’t generate enough profits to cover operating expenses. In addition, labor costs are increasing because of workforce shortages.
Aside from the financial burden, here are other good reasons to leverage healthcare BPO services.
Administrative Duties and Paperwork Are Time-consuming
Managing administrative duties and paperwork is necessary to obtain, store, organize, and examine pertinent records. However, time lost to administrative duties is time lost to delivering exceptional patient care.
Let go of your time-wasting tasks and focus on more pressing duties by hiring a medical outsourcing provider.
Fierce Competition for Top Talent
Employee shortages constitute a significant challenge that healthcare providers face. Seven in ten medical facilities say that talent competition harms their operations.
Medical outsourcing is a viable solution to fill job vacancies in no time. This strategic model lets licensed healthcare employees work remotely, which can be a favorable setup for professionals who leave the industry due to intense stress and burnout.
Patient Expectations in Healthcare Are Changing
Customers demand convenience and accessibility. Even in the medical industry, patients strongly desire technology-powered healthcare. For instance, omnichannel support is increasingly popular among healthcare consumers.
However, 47% of consumers believe that healthcare focuses more on industry needs than patient needs.
An excellent way to meet patient expectations is by outsourcing customer service to a reputable medical BPO vendor. Outsourcing to a reliable service provider ensures your patients receive quality care.
Advantages of Healthcare BPO
Now that you know healthcare BPO and its meaning, it’s time to learn how your business benefits.
Healthcare providers must find a balance between patient care and non-clinical activities, enabling them to provide efficient care without sacrificing experience. Outsourcing helps you find this balance by managing time-consuming administrative activities on your behalf.
Below are the advantages of healthcare BPO you can expect.
Prevent Costly Blunders
The medical industry is subject to many rules and regulations, especially those concerning health insurance. Providers deal with private information such as patient records, diagnoses, and medical records that requires extra security. Failure to comply can lead to costly fines and penalties.
Outsourcing to a HIPAA-compliant BPO service provider ensures that you abide by the regulations and guidelines in your industry. With their help, you can remain up to date with billing regulations to avoid oversight.
Improve Data Recovery and Storage
Healthcare facilities must store data safely and be able to recover it quickly if lost. Data storage and recovery are pain points for healthcare professionals who lack comprehensive IT skills.
Outsourcing these functions to a reliable service provider improves storage security across multiple locations while providing additional protection against theft and branches. They also help recover lost data by duplicating it with digital copies. Digitized information is more secure and easier to recover than physical documents.
Provide Consistent Experience Across Channels
Many patients use multiple platforms to complete their interactions. Channel hopping tends to be disappointing because customers get inconsistent experiences across different channels. They need to repeat certain information.
Varying experiences across multiple channels harm your organization’s professionalism and brand image and can damage patient loyalty. Moreover, repeating information frustrates customers.
Providing omnichannel customer service with a BPO company lets you combine multiple platforms. This improves information flow and enhances communication consistency,
Guarantee Proactive Engagement and Notification With Patients
Patients feel empowered if you give them information meaningfully, even before they might need it. Outsourcing to a provider that uses omnichannel support and analytics tools helps you anticipate the next step in each interaction.
Touchpoints are ideal for connecting with patients on their preferred channel. Use this tool to file deadlines, confirm bookings, offer status updates, or simply provide information that a customer might be interested in.
The Bottom Line
This article covers all you need to know about healthcare BPO, its meaning, and its benefits. Healthcare BPO helps you save money and time while providing superb patient care.
An exceptional patient experience lets healthcare providers create a lasting positive impact. Understanding patients’ journeys, anticipating their needs, and using new technologies enable companies to create unique experiences. As such, they boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
If you’re ready to take your patient care to the next level, reduce costs, and promote a positive image, outsource to Unity Communications now. We’ll help you find a setup that works best for your business.
