Okay, so this post is a good lesson as well as a tip of the hat to someone I know who is doing a great job for a lot of mental health clinicians.
How much time did it take you to make application to get on panel with an insurance provider? How much time online… on the phone… filling out the application… following up… etc?
If you haven’t done it yet, are you waiting because… you don’t know what you don’t know — you don’t know where to start — you don’t want the hassle? Are you losing money as you wait?
Honestly, when I think of the hours and hours I spent with that whole process a few years ago it still makes me shake my head and ask myself what I was thinking. If I had taken that time to market my practice or work on getting more people to my website, it would have made a lot more sense and I’d have made a lot more money.
I’m reminded of this because of some wonderful testimonials I just saw for using a practice management consultant to provide credentialing services. This particular practice management consultant happens to be my husband, Jim Legge, who provides “Helping Hands Practice Management Services” though his company, Leggecy Enterprises
Jim has gotten some rave reviews lately from people who are using his credentialing services for getting registered with CAQH and getting on insurance panels. The last one I heard was: “I’d like to know how you make this so easy. I couldn’t even get to the right people at insurance companies to ask questions!”
When it comes to getting on insurance panels, creating brochures, developing a marketing plan, or any other “must do” strategies to move forward your practice, there are times when it is just going to make more sense to turn it over.
The key is to think about how much time the particular task is going to take, and whether or not your time is better invested doing something else for your business. It also has to do with your comfort level with the task at hand.
I’ve always been famous for wanting to do it all myself — now I know that some of the best tasks I do are the ones I turn over to someone else. I realize that my time is best spent doing what I do best and my money is best spent paying someone else for their expertise.
Lesson learned.
