Optimizing Administrative Processes for Mental Health Practices

If you have any experience running a mental health practice or have ever worked there, you must know how frustrating the operations can be. Hours of paperwork, managing documentation and supplies, keeping patient records, fighting with inflation, and most of all, drowning in administrative tasks are all challenges that practices face every day. 

These problems not only challenge the bottom line of mental health practices but also become a hurdle in providing quality patient care. Here’s something that might surprise you. Psychiatrists spend an average of 10.6 hours per week. That’s a lot, because it amounts to about 20% the time that physicians work. What’s more shocking is that mental health professionals spend more time on administrative tasks than other specialist physicians. Just how much? 3 hours more!

If you own a practice and want to survive in the long run, you must be aware of the challenges you face and how to solve them. Here’s how.

Hidden Price Tag of Administrative Inefficiency

Before we get to the solutions, let’s briefly discuss how the inefficiency in admin tasks can harm your practice in hidden ways. 

Time is Money, Literally

When your doctors are spending more than 10 hours per week on paperwork instead of seeing patients, you are sure to lose a lot of money. If you are a Medicaid participating physician, you can lose as much as 18% revenue to the billing problems alone. 

The Credentialing Problem

Getting credentialed with insurance panels costs between $2,000-$3,000 annually per provider. Individual applications can run $100-$300 per payer, and the process typically takes several months. Now, if you don’t get the credentialing on time, you can’t bill those insurance companies. Which means not only leaving money on the table, but also losing long-term clients. 

Billing Mistakes Add Up Fast

Whether you’re managing billing in-house or outsourcing it, the costs are substantial. An in-house full-time biller costs $40,000-$55,000 annually plus benefits, while billing software and clearinghouse fees add another $150-$500 monthly. Outsourcing typically runs 5-10% of collections, which for a practice collecting $100,000 monthly, means $5,000-$10,000 in billing service fees.

How Can You Solve These Issues?

After all the panic details that we discussed above, here is some good news. You don’t have to accept administrative chaos as the cost of doing business. From the experience of many providers who dealt with these hurdles, we have shortlisted some strategies that really work. Let’s take a look. 

Get Professional Credentialing Services

Grab the problems at the root. So, what’s the root cause problem? In many cases, it is wrong or delayed credentialing. Remember that $2,000-$3,000 annual credentialing cost we mentioned? That’s actually the conservative estimate. 

Trying to handle the credentialing process in-house can destroy your resources and time. So, it is always better to get professional insurance credentialing services from third-party companies. These companies have the required experience and expertise to handle all kinds of bottlenecks that arise in the credentialing process. 

If you select the right partner, you can get credentialed within 7 days, instead of months. 

Reach Out To Billing Companies

It does not matter whether you do your billing in-house or outsource it; optimization is vital. Even though it is not advised, if you are handling the billing in-house, make sure that your team gets proper training and uses Clearinghouse software, which can help in detecting errors. 

If you’re considering outsourcing to one ot the mental health billing companies, don’t get scared by seeing high percentage pricing on the websites. You must evaluate these companies on a lot of metrics before you sign the contract. 

Look for things like claim acceptance rate, reduction in denials, eligibility verification, number of specialities they serve, years os experience, and more. 

Yes, you’ll pay 5-10% of collections, but if they improve your collection rate by 15%, you’re actually coming out ahead.

Promote Telehealth In Your Practice

From an administrative standpoint, integrated telehealth platforms eliminate the need for separate scheduling, reduce no-show rates through easier access, and streamline documentation when they’re built into your EHR system. 

This can mean a lot of reduced expenses for your practice. If you leave every other strategy and just focus on this one, you can still turn your losses into profits. So, don’t take it lightly.

Wrapping Up

Let’s wrap up everything. Administrative burdens are huge for mental health practices, yet the solutions are simple. If you want to beat the challenges, just take 3 simple steps:

• Get your credentialing done by outsourced vendors
• Outsource your medical billing to specialized companies
• Promote telehealth services in your practice.