SCB is presently known for its coding, billing and accounts receivable management. Now, with the addition of these new services, SCB offers surgery centers the opportunity to not only outsource their billing but to also consider letting SCB do their managed care negotiation, monthly financial reporting, accounts payable, insurance verification and patient financial counseling.
“For some time, we have had potential clients asking, ‘Can you call and verify if our patients have the insurance they say they have?’” says Ms. Serbin. “With today’s managed care requirements, it often requires a full-time person just to do insurance verification and patient financial counseling. Surgery centers often don’t have enough time or staff to have a full time person in that role. However, without adequate verification of benefits and explanation to the patient of their upfront financial responsibility, collection of the ASC’s reimbursement is often slow or non-existent.”
SCB’s new service can also help with the time-consuming task of tracking and paying supply invoices and regular monthly expenses. These tasks can often take up half to three-quarters of the time spent by the surgery center’s management team.
“Another common question we hear is, ‘Can you help us by providing financial services; accounts payable and financial reports?’” says Ms. Serbin. “We do these tasks for our management clients and they are very appreciative of the time saved, so we thought we could offer this service to billing clients as well. SCB is trying to make it easer for the managers to run their center by giving them back their time.”
Another difficult and time-consuming task is negotiating and reviewing managed care contracts. Over the past few years, the time required to negotiate a good managed care contract has increased from a few weeks to three to six months, says Ms. Serbin.
“Not only that, you need to understand the negotiation language and be knowledgeable about implant reimbursement, carve-outs, special reimbursement schedules, ancillary service reimbursement, appropriate reciprocity, etc.," she says. "We have highly experienced employees who can review a center’s current contracts and make recommendations for changes or who can negotiate them from the beginning. This new service will probably be our most popular as contract negotiation has become an unwelcome and lengthy task.”
To learn more about these financial services, visit Serbin Surgery Center Billing.
