 | With the health care industry growing rapidly and demands on in-house medical office staff increasing, many doctors are outsourcing billing tasks to independent, work-at-home medical billing and coding professionals. If you are interested in doing medical billing at home, here are some steps you can take to get your business up and running: | - Assess your personality. Running a medical billing business at home takes focus, discipline and a can-do attitude. During the hours you've set aside for work, you'll need to be able to tune out household distractions. You'll also need to be ready to handle all aspects of the business, from the actual work you do for clients to marketing your business, doing your bookkeeping, invoicing clients and perhaps even managing employees.
- Get medical billing training. There is a wide variety of medical billing training programs to choose from. Whether you want to earn a certificate or degree, learn online or on campus, you can use All Allied Health Schools to find the school that's best for you.
- Get hands-on experience. Since medical billers and coders directly influence when and how much doctors get paid by insurance companies, you are much more likely to win clients once you have some practical experience under your belt. This being the case, you may want to take a job in a medical office for the first six or 12 months of your career.
- Write a business plan. Outline the goals you have for your business and the steps you plan to take to reach them. For example, you might want to land your first client within six months of obtaining your business license and have three clients by the end of your first year (you can plan on making an average of about $10,000 per year, per doctor, according to Electronic Medical Billing Network of America.) Your business plan should specify how you plan to achieve these goals.
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 - Take stock of your financial resources. You should plan on spending about $3,000 to launch your home-based medical billing business. This will cover the software you'll need, office supplies, business-licensing fees, and the costs of your initial marketing materials. If your family currently relies on you to contribute to the monthly household income, you'll likely want to have the equivalent of at least six-to-eight months' income in savings—more if you don't plan to work while completing your training. You may also want to budget money for your education if you don't want to take out student loans.
- Research the local market. Before you start your at-home medical billing business, you'll want to determine if your local market is already saturated with similar operations. According to Electronic Medical Billing Network of America, for every 1,000 doctors in your area, two or three will greatly need your services at any given time. At the same time, about 25 percent of the medical billing practices you see in the “Billing” or “Insurance Claim Specialists” sections of the phone book will be actively looking to add one or two new clients. Making these two calculations should give you a rough idea of supply and demand in your area.
- Make sure your house is well suited to hosting a business. Ideally, you should have a room available to be used exclusively as a home office. You should also check to make sure zoning laws will allow you to operate a home business—this is generally not an issue for those seeking to operate medical billing business at home, but it may apply to you if you want to hang a sign in front of your house advertising your business or plan to see clients at home.
- Apply for your business license. Most cities have websites where you can download all the necessary paperwork to apply for your business license. From there, it's a simple matter of filling out the forms and dropping them in the mail.
- Initiate your marketing plan. Once you've completed the above steps, it's time to get to work and start actively seeking clients for your medical billing business. While networking will probably generate the best leads, sending out letters describing your services and following up with phone calls also works well.
- Network. You can make industry contacts by joining professional organizations, talking to your own family's doctors, or even by taking job with a temp agency (specializing in medical staffing) so that you're able to work for a wide variety of potential clients.
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Medical Billing and Coding
Career Info |
