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What is coinsurance? A simple guide for patients

When reviewing a medical bill or insurance explanation of benefits (EOB), you may notice a charge labeled coinsurance. Understanding what coinsurance is—and when it applies—can help patients better anticipate healthcare costs and avoid surprises. What is coinsurance? Coinsurance is the percentage of the cost of a covered healthcare service that

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AI Powered Patient Communication

In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, patient satisfaction is paramount. Beyond medical care, the patient's overall experience, including billing interactions, plays a crucial role in shaping their perception of a healthcare provider. At Inbox Health, in addition to cataloging and utilizing raw data billing events that can empower future neural

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Selecting a health plan: How medical practices can support patients

January 1 is right around the corner, and many of your patients are already thinking about whether they will stick with their current health insurance plan or choose a new one. It’s a major decision with potentially significant financial implications. A wrong choice could easily send someone spiraling into unforeseen

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Patients don’t understand their medical bills: How billing teams can help

The dreaded medical bill. Many patients feel a sense of anxiety before they even open the envelope, email, or text message. In an era of high-deductible health plans, patients are asking themselves, “How much will I owe? Will I be able to afford to pay the balance? Am I facing

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Five Key Considerations for Radiologists to Improve Net Patient Collections

More patients have high deductible health plans than ever before. This means patients are increasingly responsible for the majority of their healthcare bills, including bills for expensive radiology services. What can radiology practices do to improve net patient collections? First, educate patients about what they’ll owe, then empower them to

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5 healthcare digital payment trends: What you need to know

Let’s face it. We all lead busy lives, and paying bills isn’t necessarily how we want to spend our time. The option to pay digitally can help alleviate stress. Healthcare digital payments are fast, easy, and let us spend more time doing what we want. That’s why businesses in many

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8 Strategies for Practices and Medical Billing Companies to Address the Staffing Crisis

In any business, employees are a critical asset. This applies to all industries, including healthcare. Attracting and retaining top talent allows healthcare organizations and medical billing companies to thrive and grow. Without people, short- and long-term success would not be possible. Unfortunately, existing healthcare staffing shortages have only worsened

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5 Steps to Market Your Medical Billing Company for Growth

Plenty of economic optimism surrounds the medical billing industry. The medical billing outsourcing market is expected to grow 12.6% by 2028, according to a recent report by Grand View Research, Inc. An effective marketing strategy plays a key role in accelerating business growth. When executed correctly, that strategy makes a

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Medical debt and consumer credit reports: Prepare your medical practice for upcoming changes

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently reported that several of the biggest credit-reporting firms will remove most types of medical debt from consumers’ credit reports beginning in July. Although this may be good news for people who might otherwise never miss a debt payment, it could spell trouble for medical

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Five Strategies to Boost Practice Revenue and Bill With Empathy During COVID-19

COVID-19 has forced medical practices and billing companies nationwide to rethink the way they do business. This is especially true when it comes to managing the patient financial experience—something that the majority of respondents to a recent Inbox Health survey said they felt the need to improve even before the

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Inside the Success of 3 Medical Billing Companies in 2021

You have big goals for your billing team in 2022. To set yourself up for success, it’s helpful to learn from the past. Many of Inbox Health’s billing companies reported great wins in 2021. Here’s what has contributed to their growth (hint: automation is a common theme): The Auctus

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Billing Practices: Requirements Related to Surprise Billing; Part II

As explained in Part I of this two-part series, surprise medical billing generally occurs when insured patients are unknowingly treated by out-of-network providers or facilities then receive a larger-than-expected bill. Billing departments can play a key role in carrying out the No Surprises Act – a new law banning this

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6 Steps for Success During Deductible Season

Ready, set, deductible reset. Billing teams and practices are presented with many challenges during the first few months of the calendar year when deductibles reset. This time period, typically January through March, is known at Red House Medical Billing as deductible season. However, deductible season does not have to be

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Top ICD-10-CM coding changes to brush up on for 2022

Change. It’s a constant in medical coding, and there is plenty of it for fiscal year 2022: 159 new ICD-10-CM codes, 25 ICD-10-CM code deletions, and 27 ICD-10-CM code revisions that took effect October 1. You can view the changes on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. While

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Billing Practices: Requirements Related to Surprise Billing; Part I

Surprise medical billing generally occurs when insured patients are unknowingly treated by out-of-network providers or facilities then receive a larger-than-expected bill. Congress ended this practice in most health care settings in a breakthrough law titled the No Surprises Act (P.L. 116-260), holding patients harmless to their in-network cost-sharing and providing

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Top 4 Ways the No Surprises Act Impacts Medical Billers

Inbox Health hosted a webinar on October 21, 2021, titled, “No Surprises Act: What Healthcare Professionals Need to Know.” The law, set to go into effect January 1, 2022, protects patients from unexpected medical bills. Dr. Jack Hoadley, Research Professor Emeritus in the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University’s McCourt

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How to Prepare for the Future of Medical Billing

I have been involved in every corner of the medical billing industry. Over the course of 20 years, I have been a practice administrator, owned a billing company, and spent 14 years on the marketing and sales side of the industry. Now, as the customer solutions director for Inbox Health,

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Inbox Health has made the Inc. Magazine Inc 5000 list of “Fastest Growing Private Companies in America”!

It’s an exciting time to be a part of Inbox Health. Inbox Health was recently recognized in this year’s Inc 5000, as one of the fastest growing private companies in America for 2021. With year-over-year growth of 944%, Inbox Health was ranked 517 overall, 66 out of all private software

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Medical Debt Is Worse Than Most Thought, Why Is This Important For Billers?

If there is a group of people that know about medical debt, it’s medical billers. Sixty percent of Americans have been in debt due to medical bills, with most consumers owing on average between $5,000 and $9,9999 (and 13% owing more than $20,000). [1] These figures of patient responsibility have

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Three Ways Billers Are Part Of The Surprise Medical Billing Solution

Medical billers understand surprise medical bills better than most being on the receiving end of the disgruntled patient who doesn’t understand why their insurance didn’t cover the tab for their most recent medical visit or procedure. While the majority of unexpected out-of-network bills occur in the hospital setting, billers that

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Medical Billers Face A Skilled Labor Shortage As The Industry Recovers

Wages are growing, job openings are going unfilled and more Americans are quitting their jobs than at any time in the last two decades. [1] The pressure to find skilled laborers is even more acute in industries that are growing like Medical Billing, which is expected to grow at a

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Patients are coming back, get ready

How far we’ve come since last summer. At this time last year you couldn’t turn on your computer without seeing a story about how to make it through the pandemic. Now, for those that took the right steps, the story becomes how to best take advantage of the pent-up demand

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How digital payments improve patient satisfaction

I recently went to my doctor for an old shoulder injury. Since I haven’t seen this doctor in a while, I expected to fill out the requisite intake forms. COVID-19 has forced many practices to adopt digital communications to improve the patient experience so I was encouraged when the forms

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Red House Medical Billing’s increased focus on patient billing

When I started Red House Medical Billing 5 years ago I knew I had to differentiate if I was going to succeed. Processing medical bills is a commoditized business in a highly competitive industry with thousands of players. I couldn’t go out with the same messaging and service offering as

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Growth Marketing Tips For Medical Billers

You’re a medical billing company looking to grow your business. By now you’ve probably read books on how to grow your business and subscribed to all the leading blogs on the topic. But, what are the most impactful growth strategies to focus on when you don’t even have time to

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Centennial Sprint

100 sprints, wow! We at Inbox Health just released our 100th product sprint to make patient billing better for medical billers, providers, and patients and what a journey it has been. A sprint is a short, time-boxed period (for us, 2-4 weeks) when a scrum team works to complete a

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Is Medical Billing a Good Business in 2021?

I recently heard from a medical biller who almost closed her doors in 2020. Even in the best of times, owning a medical billing business has its challenges. Given that biller revenue is directly tied to services provided to patients, the economic impact of the coronavirus due to fewer doctor

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Inbox Health Series A Fundraising

Today, we are pleased to announce that we’ve raised $15 million with our Series A financing. When we started this journey, we were a small team without many resources and a couple of brave customers, but we were stubbornly united by a vision for a future where the patient financial

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Report: Where Medical Practices Live Could Impact Your Success and What You Can Do About It

Medical billers and their practices have experienced widely divergent experiences in the last 12 months. From relationships with patients, overall ability to maintain and support staff, ease of collecting payments, and declining revenue, businesses have been on a virtual roller coaster. The latest report by Inbox Health Labs examines one

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You Can Buy a Tesla with Bitcoin, but Can You Pay Your Medical Bills?

Sofas, Lamborghinis, homes, and even pizza can all be bought with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin but what about a medical bill? Before answering, let’s back up a little. When talking about Bitcoin, we need to first talk about the technology that powers Bitcoin, a new distributed data structure called a “blockchain.”

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How Will the ACA Impact Medical Billers in 2021?

The Biden Administration recently announced a special three-month enrollment period for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance starting February 15. Consumers in three dozen states will be able to enroll or make a plan change without the need for a qualifying event. This is welcome news to medical billers who

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Do Patients Trust Medical Bills?

2021 continues with the trend of patients being increasingly responsible for medical bills, in large part, due to the rise of high deductible plans. However, less than half of that patient responsibility is ever paid in full, and at the end of the day, the doctors and their practices are

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Report: Boomers don’t like opening the mail either

It is a common myth in the medical billing community that sending patient statements digitally is not necessary or at least not urgent because a large percentage of patients, especially for certain practices, are older and not particularly tech-savvy. The assumption goes that patients are comfortable with the traditional way

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5 Things We are Thankful for in 2020

There is a lot to be thankful for this year. Focusing on gratitude is a way for us to not only remain positive and look forward, but it is also a way to bask in the glow of hard work and many accomplishments. Here, for Inbox Health, we bring to

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Top 6 Capabilities of Successful Medical Billers

One thing is certain: there were many billers that consistently swam against the current and made their way to shore more successfully than ever this year. How they did it may have something to do with some essential medical billing capabilities that they either embraced right away or that they

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What Can the Medical Billing Industry Expect from a Biden Administration?

While court battles - and two senate seat run-offs in Georgia to determine party control of the Senate - still remain, it is increasingly looking like Joe Biden will be named the winner of the Presidential election. If so, what does this mean for medical billers given differences in healthcare

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Report: How COVID-19 Is Affecting Patient Payment Activity

Thanks to a recently published report by Inbox Health Labs, for the very first time medical billers can see the impact of COVID-19 on patient payments and begin to plan for 2021. What is clear is that rethinking patient billing will be necessary to adapt to the changes being inflicted

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Introducing Mailbox: Seamless Mailed Payments

Since starting Inbox Health, we've facilitated more than one million digital payments on the web, phone, and in the office. In doing so, we've given patients a seamless customer experience, while also automating the arduous, manual payment posting process for providers. While we strive to bring that digital experience to

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Is it safe to see my doctor?

One of the indirect health costs of the COVID-19 pandemic is that fear of infection has caused many patients to delay non-COVID-19 related healthcare visits. Stay-at-home orders in many States and, in the case of millions of newly unemployed Americans, the loss of healthcare coverage, have resulted in the postponement

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Medical Billers Discuss Strategies for Better Billing During COVID-19

Inbox Health recently hosted a webinar with some of the country’s leading medical billers to provide insight into their experience handling COVID-19. The guest speakers and medical billing experts from the webinar included Amy Koon from Keystone Medical Billing, Kevin McCormick from Resolutions Billing & Consulting, and Danilo Cortez from

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Who is adopting digital technology during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We live in chaotic times. At the beginning of this year if you wanted to book a visit to the doctor you might use a phone to dial the office number and schedule an appointment. You might have been given a list of available slots by the receptionist and selected

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Medical Billers Describe Significant Impact from COVID-19 Pandemic

It has been widely reported that independent medical practices across the United States are suffering serious economic hardship as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent reduction in elective and non-urgent care procedures. It only goes to follow that industries servicing these practices will experience similar repercussions. In

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Patient Driven Payment Plans

Times are hard. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate is 14.7%, and is expected to drop even further due to the coronavirus pandemic. What happens when a patient is unemployed, with no health insurance, and they have to visit the hospital due to an

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Medical Billing’s ‘New Normal’

Anyone following the news knows that the medical community is hurting. Elective procedures were mostly eliminated, ‘non-urgent’ visits were postponed and Independent practices are closing their doors. While we can’t be sure what the ‘new normal’ will look like after we’re through the other side of this pandemic, there are

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Remote payments during a time of social distancing

Many practice’s ability to accept payments has been disrupted. Most methods of accepting payments have been compromised, ranging from checking the office mailbox, taking payments with a physical swipe-reader, or software that cannot be installed on staff’s home computers. While many patients continue to pay their medical bills or to

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Mailbox Not Accepting Paper Bills At This Time

Medical billing is under attack. In just a few months, the coronavirus has changed the entire world, and most definitely our healthcare system. This unpredictable virus has provided little clarity, and driven nonessential visits to hospitals and providers, much like the economy, into a free fall. According to a report

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Feature Release To Help Billers Communicate During The Pandemic

Dr. Harvey Fineberg, chairman of a committee with the National Academy of Sciences wrote in a letter that the virus can be spread through normal talking and breathing. "While the current [coronavirus] specific research is limited, the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing,"

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How The Healthcare Industry Should Emerge From The Coronavirus Quarantine

The healthcare industry is currently facing unprecedented disruption. Scarcities of staffing, ballooning expenses, mass uncertainty, and new risks to in-person communication due to COVID-19 are driving adoption of new technologies for patient engagement in all dimensions of the medical experience. Unlike a visit to the bank or supermarket, most consumers

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Billers: Your Practices Need You Now More Than Ever

The largest emergency aid package in US history was passed on Friday. The unprecedented bill is going to inject money into the hands of individuals and industries affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. The healthcare industry in particular is being granted $117 billion for hospitals and veterans’ health care, in addition

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Medical Billing From the Trenches of COVID-19

There's no doubt that things have changed since COVID-19. From social distancing to senior hours at the grocery store, we've adjusted our daily routines to adapt to the 'new normal'. For most of the Medical Billers we speak with, the 'new normal' is still being determined. We at Inbox Health

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How Coronavirus Is Driving Healthcare Digitization

COVID-19 is straining and changing our healthcare system before our very eyes. From emergency preparedness to supply chain to telehealth, we are witnessing transformations that will have a permanent impact on how healthcare is delivered long after the COVID-19 pandemic has receded. We need to learn from this catastrophe. Many

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COVID-19 Update

Over the last few days, all of us in the medical billing community have been faced with an unprecedented challenge as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. We have spoken with dozens of our customers over the last week whom, like us, are facing difficult choices to find ways

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Lunch with Inbox Health

We have a large table in our office that we call our family lunch table. Conversations around the table usually always end up in some kind of generational comparison. I’m the Gen-xer associating almost every topic back to a John Hughes movie. Or describing why Nirvana was our Bob

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People are ignoring their health bills. Can you blame them?

I walk into my local supermarket and I get a notification sent to my phone with coupons for diapers for my 1 year old, Goldfish for my 4 year old, and Diet Coke for me (how well they know me!). I log into Amazon and the site loads up my

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Leading Lab Improves Patient Experience with Inbox Health

Summary Your Health Lab (YHL), a leading clinical diagnostic laboratory serving the state of Texas, was looking for ways to make medical bills, and the billing process, more transparent for patients and providers. They wanted a better way to engage patients following the diagnostics service and the subsequent adjudication process.