Reference checking is certainly not the only element that must be properly executed in your medical billing company selection. It is, however, one of the more critical and it has several sub-steps that must be properly considered.

Although today's write-up is geared towards creating an effective interview guide, this is far from the only ingredient of a successful medical billing services company selection. Other critical ingredients include outlining the minimum requirements of an acceptable reference (e.g., does it need to be in your state, what specialties are acceptable, etc), deciding if you want to speak with a former client, outlining the roles of the people with whom your wish to speak (e.g., lead partner, practice administrator, day-to-day billing contact, etc), creating the interview guide, call the references, and making the final go/no-go decision.

Your interview guide will allow you and not the references to determine what topics are addressed in the reference calls. If you do not drive the calls, you may well end the process still unsure about your final decision. To kick-off the interview guide creation think about the worst things and the best things that could happen as a result of medical billing outsourcing. Keeping your mind on these best and worst cases develop questions that will help you determine where between these two extremes your potential medical billing company operates.

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.

Given this issue, your next task is to make the question more geared towards gathering objective facts. For instance, you might change the question above to say, ?How many hours per week did you spend before outsourcing on reviewing billing performance reports, reviewing EOBs, and reconciling your bank deposits with your billing system reports? How many hours per week do you spend on this now??

Once you complete the list of questions and make them specific enough to gather objective data type them out in a logical manner and leave the space required to jot down the answer right on the interview guide. Before the first call sit down and look at the questions one final time. Make sure that the answers to these questions will give you the comfort you need to make a final decision. Start making the reference calls once you are confident your interview guide is ready.

When you make the call make sure to confirm how long you have to speak with the individual and pace your call accordingly. You want to make sure you get through each of your questions with each of the references. If someone starts to linger too long on a single question or takes the call off on a tangent, make sure to get them back on track by letting them know you have a list of question you want to make sure you get covered during the call. End the call by thanking the person and asking for permission to call back if you have any additional questions.

Do not hesitate to call back your earlier references if one of the later ones brings up an important potential benefit or concern that you had not considered. You want to insure you hear what all of the references have to say about this new point.

Following the process outlined above will insure that you gather the factual information required to make an informed decision about your medical billing service.

Copyright 2008 by Medical Billing Services Buying Guide.