Are Billing Services Worth it?

Most billing services charge a percent of claims paid, often 5 to 9%. For this they provide one or more of the following services:
· Electronic filing of insurance claims
· Patient billing (self-pay, co-pays)
· Authorizations (initial and tracking)
· Payment posting (including electronic payment advise)
· Follow up on unpaid or improperly processed claims
· Reports, e.g. aging, etc
· Benefit verification
The trade off for the peace of mind that the billing and patient accounting will be done promptly and well is cost. Billing services can easily run even part-time therapists hundreds of dollars per month.
The argument against billing services is that billing is not that complicated: a clinician with a good system after working out the kinks will spend less than an hour a month to get the same results as a billing service. So the question: is an hour of time worth the hundreds of dollars a month paid to a billing service? To some the answer may be yes. To most, the answer is no.
For those opting to do billing themselves, the biggest hurdle is getting set up. The first question is which claims system to use. Prices vary.
Therapist Helper, the most widely used behavioral health billing system, charges a sign up fee of $75 and a yearly support fee of $329 per year for one provider ($45 for each additional clinician). Ongoing fees are: monthly fee of $10.00 per provider, plus $.27 per claim. Thus for a solo practitioner sending in 100 claims per month, the monthly fee be over $60 per month. A larger practice would achieve some efficiencies but the price for claims would still likely exceed $50 per month per clinician. Therapist Helper charges part-time clinicians the same amount as full time clinicians. Other healthcare billing systems, such as NueMD, are terribly expensive, starting at well over $200 per clinician.
A cheaper alternative is CarePaths e-Record. The e-billing module costs $20 per month per clinician. For the eRecord (includes EMR) the price is just $35.