The path from deciding to outsource your cardiology billing to selecting your medical billing company requires a well planned selection strategy. A cornerstone of this strategy is well thought out and executed reference checks.

There are many critical stops to make in the journey towards your cardio billing company selection. Reference checking is one of the most important stops along the road. There are several steps that must be taken to ensure through reference checking.

These elements include properly defining the type of references that will be meaning for you (e.g., geography, length as a client, number of providers, primary payers, etc), obtaining success and failures as references, determining with whom you wish to speak at the references, developing an interview guide for your reference calls, conducting the reference checks, synthesizing the results of the checks and making a final decision about the billing company. The main focus of this article is creating an effective interview guide.

An interview guide is your road map for the interview calls that insures you ask everything required to make a good decision. The first step in developing the interview guide is writing out the best and worst case scenarios for the potential billing company. With this in hand create a list of questions that will help you determine where along the spectrum between your two scenarios your potential medical billing service may lie.

It is critical to ensure that your questions are specific enough that you can come away with real facts from the reference calls.  You do not want to ask broad questions like "Are you happy with this company's performance?" Such questions are open to much interpretation and are driven by the individual's previous experiences.

You can overcome this problem by asking targeted questions that get to the root of what is important to you. If you really care about timely filing issues ask "How many times has this billing company missed a timely filing deadline?"

With your list of questions completed you need to put them in an easy to use form. The best approach is to print them out with about four questions spaced out on a page. This allows you to easily write the answers next to the questions. Do not make any calls until you do a final read through of your questions and ask yourself, "will I have what I need to make a final decision if I get these answers?" If the answer is "yes", then pick up the phone and start dialing.

It is critical not to allow a good meaning but talkative reference keep you from getting all of your questions answered. Make sure they know you have a pre-determined list of questions you need to address. Find out how long they have to speak with you and keep an eye on the clock to make sure you get all of the information you need. You should leave the door open for call backs by letting references know you may need to speak with them again.

One final tip: If during the reference check one of the references brings up a key issue you had not considered, add it to your interview guide and call back any references to which you have already spoken to get the missing data you need from them.

With your well planned and structured reference checks complete you will be in a position to make an informed medical billing service decision.

To learn more visit the Cardiology Billing Partner's Website.

Copyright 2008 by Cardiology Billing Partners.