How to Hire the Right Credentialing Company for Your Therapy Clinic
When you first opened your therapy clinic, you may have assumed that being organized about credentialing could stay at the bottom of your to-do list. It can easily fall by the wayside when you have seemingly more important things vying for your attention. But once you had that first experience of having to put a patient on hold due to lapsed credentials, or being on the phone with an insurance company for hours and getting nowhere, you may have realized the significance of this type of paperwork for the health and future of your business.
If you’ve decided you need help keeping up with credentials but don’t know where to begin, you’re in the right place. The Clinic Connection team has compiled our best advice for your credentialing company search. Here are our top four tips:
1. Look for comprehensive services. Outsourcing your full suite of credentialing needs makes things much smoother than leaving them chopped up. For example, rather than taking care of your own NPI numbers and CAQH IDs but having a third party take care of insurance enrollments, it’s wise to create a system for one person or company to take care of everything. Before you begin your search, make a list of every type of credential your clinic needs to keep up with. Then, look into outsourcing all of them for the sake of efficiency and to avoid any delays due to sheer confusion about who’s responsible for which items. This consolidation will likely save you money in the end as well.
2. Investigate their communication frequency. What is required of you? Will the company keep you informed well in advance of anything that needs your attention? One of the first questions a credentialing company should ask you is how you’d like to communicate with them. After all, ancillary services like these are intended to make your life easier as a business owner. A company that takes these details into account is one that will have your best interests in mind overall.
If you have just a few therapists to keep records for, you’ll have different needs than a large, multidisciplinary practice. Therefore, the type of communication offered by credentialing experts should not be one-size-fits-all. At Clinic Connection, we customize the frequency and medium of communication for your preferences and offer advice tailored to the size of your practice because we know how busy your life is. Instead of receiving incessant email reminders about producing paperwork, do you prefer a quick text? How about one weekly email summary of everything we’re working on for you? We believe it’s possible to run your clinic effectively and stay on top of credentialing without being burdened by unnecessary details.
3. Consider customization. There’s nothing worse than knowing exactly what level of services you need and not being able to find that exact combination anywhere. A knowledgeable credentialing company will understand that it’s impossible to bundle every therapy clinic’s requirements into simple tiers, or to predict how they will change over time. So one essential question to keep in mind during your search is: Am I able to create a custom package and adjust as my business grows?
Going with the customizable option from the get-go is important because you shouldn’t have to repeat the setup process with a new third party after you’ve gone through it once with someone else. Imagine what your practice will look like in six months, one year, or even five years. Is the company you’re considering able to handle the needs of each one of those iterations?
4. Ask your peers (other clinic owners) for recommendations. Despite our modern ability to search far and wide for the services we need, it’s still true that old-school word of mouth wins. Oftentimes, the best resources you have are others who are in the same proverbial boat. Instead of reading reviews online, why not first go to the people you trust the most? If you don’t yet have trusted connections, begin networking with other clinic owners in your area by attending industry conferences and continuing education courses, or by getting involved in local or state advocacy. Having a group of friends who have not only searched for help with credentialing before, but experienced the ins and outs of working with a particular company, can be the best way to source solid recommendations.
At Clinic Connection, we have more than two decades of experience being entrenched in the therapy world just like you are now, so we know why it’s essential to make sound entrepreneurial and discipline-specific decisions. Deciding to bring an external company in to help you run your therapy business and handle sensitive documents on behalf of your staff is a big deal. There’s a lot on the line, but we believe that following the above guidelines is a great place to start with this potentially intimidating process.
Find out how a third party onboarding process could look by scheduling a consultation with our credentialing experts today.
