One Secret to Credentialing That Even Insurance Companies Don’t Know
If you are a therapy clinic owner, you and your staff interact with insurance companies all the time. If you interact with insurance companies all the time, there is something you should know. Credentialing for your therapists will involve talking to insurance companies, a lot. Here’s how to make this interaction more effective for all involved.
No matter what you are contacting the company about, there can be major wait times, frustration for all parties involved, and even expensive miscommunications. In fact, when it comes to credentialing your therapists, a negative experience with an insurance company can mean that someone may not be cleared to treat patients at all. This is not great for your own mental health.
So, what is this secret to credentialing that even insurance companies don’t know? Insurance reps will often reveal information you may not expect. Make positive interpersonal communication your priority, and you win every time. When you make the insurance company reps your best friends, you create a level of trust that cannot otherwise exist.
Instead of being just another caller in a long queue, you want to be the one they look forward to talking to. Get to know these reps, and make it genuine.
You should be on a first-name basis, ask them how their weekend was, and how their granddaughter’s piano recital went on Thursday night. Once you befriend that person, treat them with the same respect you would the cashier at McDonald’s or your waitperson at the Macaroni Grill.
Once you reach this level of familiarity, you can begin asking questions that impact how you interact with that insurance company related to credentialing. They are more willing to share information, tips, and hints about how things really get done in their office. You could learn about actual wait times for the next follow-up, upcoming changes that haven’t been published yet, and even internal rumblings about significant staffing changes that could create a trickle-down effect for your wait times.
Throughout years of making the phone calls ourselves, we have discovered that the state of the healthcare industry today can be summarized in one word: consolidation.
Insurance companies are always in transition. To understand what we mean, look up any insurance company’s Wikipedia page and observe that most entries contain these major sections: Company History, Acquisitions, Controversies.
Why does this matter? The more of these pages you read, the easier it is to spot the patterns: smaller insurance companies are often consumed by those at the top. Larger companies acquire and merge with other companies. Their corporate policies are always evolving, and this means employees are just trying to keep up. You and your admin staff, the ones caught between the insurance companies and the patients, are on the receiving end of more than a few dysfunctional chain reactions.
The knot in the chain is above both you and the person you are on the phone with.
Most ineptitude you perceive is not their fault, nor is it yours.
No matter how well you prepare for a phone call, there will be elements that are out of your control, the most significant one of which will be the emotional state of the insurance rep on the other end of the line.
Employees of these companies are overwhelmed and corporately misinformed. In addition to the professional confusion, they may also be dealing with personal frustrations. Just like you, they might not be in the best mood at the moment when you catch them. They may not have had their coffee yet.
At the core, the secret to easing your clinic’s credentialing burden is in how well you and your staff treat the people with whom you interact. You can only control your end of the conversation. At Clinic Connection, we believe it is critical to hire people with big hearts and encourage them to express empathy in every part of their jobs, but especially in potentially stressful moments. It could mean the difference between a fully operational clinic with happy therapists and patients, and one that is overwhelmed and struggling with cash flow.
Need more specific ideas about making credentialing easier for your clinic? Contact us today.
