Working in a physician's office brings many learning opportunities. Whether you work for an individual provider or in a group setting, you may be called on to perform tasks you've never been trained to do. For example, whether your physician is opening a new practice or has become dissatisfied with his current billing service/software, if you have billing and coding experience, you may be asked for your input on finding a new billing service or billing software. You may even be called on to research the advantages of hiring a billing company versus buying software and performing billing duties inhouse.

Billing services charge a variety of prices and in a variety of ways. They may charge a flat fee, charge by the number of accounts billed, charge for a small percentage of the charges billed, or charge a small percentage based on the monies collected. The cost also depends on the services provided. Some billing companies do strictly that, billing. Others provide a practice suite of services such as scheduling, electronic records, and billing. Some provide these services done completely for you, allowing the physician and his staff to concentrate on patient care. Other services work with an office staff, providing portions of the software and support. Whichever service your provider chooses, there will be a cost, and this cost can be a deciding factor all by itself. So, it's important to choose a service or software that best fits your practice and provides the services needed, so you will also want to ask for references from physician's currently using the companies you're most interested in. If another physician using this company is close by, it's an acceptable practice to ask the office manager if you and your physician can visit their office and take a look at how they use the service/software and get opinions from their staff. Don't be sold on a company who can't provide concrete evidence that they or their software can do everything they say--and everything you're looking for.

Below are four websites. Copy and paste the web addresses into the address bar on a separate tab of your Internet. Two of these websites are for billing services/practice suites. Two provide software and may also provide service. Go to their home pages and scroll through these websites. Watch the videos you find on their sites. I don't recommend requesting or "watching" a demo as this will require you to fill out a form and alert the company to contact you regarding setting up an interview to speak with your physician. That's not the assignment! Simply scroll through the website information and watch the videos.

Type a paragraph telling me about the service you are most impressed with.