Around 1 in 5 people in the United States currently suffer from mental health problems.  The most commonly reported issues are anxiety and depression, with an estimated 42% of Americans reporting symptoms.  Although not all will seek treatment, most private mental health practices are experiencing a high level of demand for treatment.

Mental health issues have drastically increased post-COVID-19, and with the lack of an integrated system for mental health care in the United States, it means that many private mental health practices are now seeing an unprecedented demand upon their time and their services.

If you are a mental health professional yourself, all your years of training and experience have been aimed at giving you the professional expertise in providing your patients with the best possible care.  However, billing is probably not your strongest point.  After all, if numbers were your passion, you probably would have gone to school to be an accountant or statistician.  

The truth is that most private health care providers find that billing puts an additional strain on time and resources.  Billing insurance claims is a complex field that is crucially important to the wellbeing of your business.  Yet in many mental health care practices, the billing is handled in-house by office staff who have very little interest in the task at hand and lack the professional training to successfully carry it out.

If this sounds like a familiar scenario in your own private mental health practice, help is available.

ePsych Billing provides an easy solution to billing administration

ePsych Billing is designed for the needs of private mental health care practices. They provide full support for all aspects of mental health care billing that will free up time and attention, so that your business can increase revenue without compromising the quality of your care.

Because ePsych Billing is comprised of specialists in the mental health industry, the billing services are specifically targeted to your needs.  The billing company provides a range of great features that will help negotiate the often tricky paths of payment for mental health care.

By using software of your choice, you can file claims, resubmit claims that have been denied, and reevaluate old claims. You can also keep track of your payments and process them.  You will be able to issue billing statements, track your revenue, and collect payments.

Now, instead of spending hours trying to manually process a client’s history and negotiate funding issues, this process is all seamlessly carried out automatically on your behalf.

In which specific ways can ePsych Billing help your mental health practice?

ePsych Billing can provide support for all aspects of mental health billing.  As mental health professionals know, navigating billing can be a minefield.  Let’s take a quick look at some common issues in mental health billing, and how utilizing ePsych Billing will help.

Claims Submissions

If your mental health practice accepts insurance claims, you already know this can be a time-consuming and detail-orientated process.  One small error can lead to lengthy delays and stubborn refusals.  With ePsych Billing handling your billing, your claims submissions will not only be more accurate and effective, but you will free up time in your practice; time that otherwise would be spent through long hours of complicated administration.

In addition, ePsych Billing will audit each claim for errors, so that your claims have the best chance of approval from insurance companies.  Before the claim is submitted, you will be alerted of any potential mistakes or billing errors on the claim.  This improves the chances of the claim being accepted, and drastically speeds up the overall billing process.

Also Read: Mental Health Billing Services: Top 10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Shopping

Billing for full-service therapy

Once your patient has completed therapy, all you need to do is enter in the patient information.  ePsych Billing then generates the bill, and submits it to the patient’s insurance company.  This process is integrated directly into all documentation. Thus billing for the mental health provider becomes virtually error-free, and completed much faster than doing it manually.

Denied claims, rejected claims and rejection follow up

Sometimes claims are rejected or denied.  ePsych Billing will provide you weekly reports of when your patient claims are rejected, so you will know exactly when they need to make the payment themselves.

When you implement software recommended by ePsych Billing, your patient also uses the same system of payment.  This means that you will not have to chase your patients for payment, essentially for treatment which is unfunded.  This ability to know that all treatment bills are accessible by you means that you no longer have to worry if your patient can pay or not. ePsych Billing takes the administrative work out of your hands, so that you can focus on providing quality treatment rather than worrying about losing money on rejected claims.

Automatic billing to your patients

Most mental health practices use a manual billing system where patients are sent a monthly statement through the mail.  Not only is this time consuming and cumbersome, but it requires you to track the progress of each monthly statement to ensure that each individual bill has been settled by the patient.

Upon request, bills can be sent to patients, and their payments are logged automatically too.  This removes the need to keep track of payments and issue reminders to late paying patients. You are instantly alerted if there is an issue of non-payment, and the software will issue reminders on your behalf.

ePsych Billing carries out benefits verification on behalf of your patients

Sometimes a patient’s health cover does not extend to mental health or perhaps their cover has lapsed without them realizing.  ePsych Billing can carry out checks on the insurance status of your patients before you provide any treatment.  This not only helps you avoid non-payment of service, it helps your patients’ experience too.   Now an unwitting patient, who believed they had full coverage, will not receive a bill that he or she never expected to pay.  This is a common scenario that often results in lack of payment, and can have a massive impact on your business’ profitability, as well as reputation.