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Outsourcing your mental health and medical billing can save you money whether you are a professional that has been doing it yourself or whether you have hired staff to do it.

Outsourcing your billing vs. Do-It-Yourself billing

Many mental health professionals start out their practices doing their own mental health billing. It is not a bad practice for someone in private practice to learn how to do their own billing in order to have a better understanding of the whole business. But is it really cost effective to continue doing the billing yourself after you have some clients and understand the billing process?

One thing a professional needs to figure out is how much is the professionals time is worth? If you average $100 per client session, your time should be worth at least $50 per hour. If you can hire someone to do your billing for a fraction of that, it makes far more business sense for you to spend time learning inexpensive ways to market and build your practice with paying clients, rather than to personally take care of the administrative hassles involved in billing insurance companies.

Once you find an effective biller who uses the best technology, you can get paid faster with much less time spent on billing. You can spend time building your practice and in the long run will make far more money than doing the billing yourself. To build a successful practice, you are far better off developing an efficient system for working with a good biller than to continue doing the billing yourself.

Outsourcing your billing vs. hiring your own staff:

Hiring your own staff is expensive and time consuming. You are likely to need extra office space to accomodate your billing staff. Hiring staff will require you to spend time and money on payroll and payroll taxes, as well as requiring you to comply with additional laws regarding employees/employers. To find and keep an experienced biller you will need to pay the biller far above minimum wage, and then staff retention may still be an issue.

When you use an effective, efficient medical billing service, you get the benefit of the billers specialization and experience. Your billing service learns things from other clients, not just from you and is independent enough to require little training on your part. You can hire a billing service as a “business associate” paying per claim, per service, or as a percent of what is collected. You can control your costs.

It is an accepted fact that workouts keep one fit and healthy. But an effective exercise routine would be one, which would help the development of the mind and body. The performance can be maximized, by the use of proper motivation and goal setting methods. In psychological terms, motivation refers to initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior. Motivation is a dynamic state of mind, the desire and willingness to do something. Incorporating these techniques in your workout regime can work wonders for both, your mind and body.

Sports psychologists have been successfully using these techniques, to maximize physical performance. This strategy can be used by anyone, depending on the fitness regime adopted. The focus for every effort and routine should be through mental preparation. Process oriented goal setting through visualization and relaxation and other mental techniques should be adopted.

Total concentration and mental focus can be achieved by association. It is a technique used in which a person totally drowns himself in the task being performed. While exercising, focusing attention on the movement of body parts and muscles is very beneficial. Such a technique is commonly used in martial arts, where coordination between body parts is increased dramatically. When a person decides to go with the flow, there is full, but relaxed concentration on every task. A person should immerse himself in the current activity with mind, body and soul. At such times, a person is totally free from all kinds of worries and concerns and thus, excellence is achieved.

Disassociation is another technique, where attention is diverted from the body part, as well as the task being performed. Thus, it is exactly opposite to association. This can be used when one gets bothered by constant repetition. Constant repetition of exercise causes discomfort, stress and also fatigue at times. But if the attention is maintained out of focus, the exercise can be performed for much longer time, which would no doubt benefit the body. Music and vocal suggestions can also be used to practice disassociation.

Different kinds of techniques can be applied at different times. Some can be applied at the start, some at the end and some during the workout. Visualization is one such technique, where one thinks good thoughts and pictures nice images. As there is a direct correlation between the mind and the body, the body will be affected in a positive way. This technique can be used before exercising, to feel motivated to exercise. When used during a workout, it makes you feel good about what you are doing and helps you focus on the benefits that it will bring you. After the work out, it can be used to connect to the inner self and visualize the purpose of the exercise, which is ultimately fulfilled and makes you feel calm and relaxed. The mind can be fed with anything, to develop confidence and self esteem.

Other techniques such as guided muscle and body relaxation using breathing techniques and simultaneously concentrating on the body parts can help overcome stress and enhance performance. Usually negative thinking leads to de-motivation and failure. Positive thinking is used to suppress negative thoughts and weaknesses and glorify strengths and also believing that you can do anything.