Billing companies that work laboratory claims every day. Describe your practice once and compare their proposals.
A few questions about the practice, then billing companies that fit send proposals. You are not committing to anything.
Hand off all of it or just the parts that are breaking. Say which in the form so the proposals match.
Charges entered, claims checked against payer edits, and sent daily so clean claims go out the first time.
Every denial worked, appealed, or corrected, with the root cause tracked so the same denial stops repeating.
Old balances called on and worked by payer and by age until they are paid, adjusted, or written off on purpose.
Certified coders assign CPT, ICD-10, and modifiers from your notes, or audit the codes your providers pick.
New providers enrolled with payers, CAQH kept current, and revalidations handled before they lapse.
Statements, online payment, payment plans, and the phone calls that come with them, handled in your name.
Eligibility checks, prior authorizations, and old AR cleanup go through the same request. If you only need one piece, say so.
There is no right answer for every practice. The usual tradeoffs:
A lab claim is small. One metabolic panel pays so little that nobody gets excited about it, which is exactly why denial patterns hide in lab billing. A wrong diagnosis pointer or a missing ordering NPI repeats across thousands of accessions before anyone notices. The core problem is medical necessity: the physician orders the test, the lab bills it, and the diagnosis on the requisition has to support it under whatever coverage policy the payer or Medicare contractor uses. The lab never saw the patient and cannot fix a vague diagnosis after the fact.
Each branch of the business breaks differently. Routine chemistry and hematology fail on panel rules, where billing the individual tests inside an organ panel gets the whole line cut. Molecular and genetic testing runs on prior authorization, miscellaneous codes, and payers who want the clinical story attached. Toxicology lives or dies on presumptive versus definitive testing, frequency limits, and whether the result changed treatment. Anatomic pathology adds technical and professional components, plus unit counts per specimen that auditors like to check. Then come ABNs and patient balances too small to be worth the stamp.
In-house staff usually treat lab like physician billing, and it is not. Most of the damage happens at the front end: insurance captured wrong at the draw site, requisitions missing fields, nobody owning the follow-up with the ordering office. A good lab biller keeps a denial log by test code and by client, and pushes fixes back to the offices sending you samples. Outsourcing makes sense when volume has outgrown one coder, or when client billing to physician offices is a mess. When you fill out the form, list your test menu and your rough split by payer type, and say whether you bill clients directly.
Three steps. Most practices hear from the first billing company within a business day.
Specialty, providers, claim volume, your software, and what you want handled.
Your request goes to billing companies that work your specialty and take on practices your size.
Compare fees, scope, reporting, and contract terms side by side. Pick one, or none.
What practice managers usually ask before they fill out the form.
Describe the practice once and compare proposals from billing companies that fit. No obligation.
Request proposals