Thursday, November 29, 2007

Time Management For Home Business Owners

Time Management For Home Business Owners

Introduction

Working at home and running a business at home can be a challenging task to say the least. It is very important to develop good time management techniques to guarantee your business success. Many home business owners feel overwhelmed and may tend to procrastinate and then find themselves way overloaded with work. Additionally, it is common for a home business owner not to know when it’s time to stop working, and shift into family mode. When your workplace is also your home place is very easy to end up working nearly 24/7. After awhile of doing this, burnout happens.

Schedules

Some people shudder at the thought of working with a schedule. They feel locked in and very stressed that if something doesn’t go as planned then the schedule is shot and then everything comes unglued. The trick to being flexible with your schedule is to give yourself plenty of time for each task. You can always add more into your initial schedule if time allows, but packing your schedule too full is a good way to end up feeling overwhelmed and burnt out.

A good way to start your schedule is to write a list of things that you do each day like when you get up, when you go to bed, when meals are, etc… Then, write another list of things that you must accomplish above and beyond the regular daily tasks. Then, you insert into your schedule your regular daily tasks for each day for the full month. Then, you go back each week and add in the extra things that you need to get accomplished. Make sure that you have breaks scheduled into your schedule and leave some ‘free time’ in there for emergencies. In other words, do not fill every single hour of a day with something to do.

If you find at the end of the day that you didn’t get everything on your schedule done, do not despair. This is actually where a schedule is very useful. Take a few moments to understand why you did not accomplish all of the daily tasks. Were you overtired? Did something come up unexpectedly? Did you put too many things on your To Do list for that day? After you realize why you did not get everything done, then you can place those tasks on your schedule for the next day or spread them out over a few days’ time.

Set Work Hours

Along with having a set but flexible schedule comes having a set work schedule. Working at home does offer flexibility but you should maintain steady work hours from day to day. Working over an or so now and then is okay, but the tendency in many small business owners is to work around the clock because there is such an internal drive to succeed. To be truly successful and on top of your game, you must have adequate rest, family time, and personal time to rejuvenate yourself. Doing this makes your work hours even more creative and productive. So, decide what hours you want to work and set a boundary with yourself that you will not work over more than an hour on any day.

Don’t Overdo It!

A real problem with business owners who work at home is not realizing when they need help. When you first start out, you may be a very small business that can easily be run by just yourself. However, as you grow, it is important to realize when you need help. This can be a tough decision to make because hiring help is an additional expense. Basically, if you find yourself putting in more hours than you feel you can handle and you do not have time for your family, personal pursuits, and relaxation time, then it is time to hire some assistance. Many people nowadays are interested in becoming virtual assistants. They can assist in answering E-mails, and other administrative tasks. Additionally, if you are doing your own accounting, it could save you time to hire an accountant. Building a successful business is important but more important is to maintain a healthy life-work balance.

Another way not to “overdo it” is to set daily goals for yourself. Daily goals are meant to assist you in meeting your monetary goals. For example, you may decide that you wish to work 8 hours a day and that is it, or you may decide that once you meet this “quota of work” for the day, you can knock off even if you’ve only put in 5 or 6 hours. Another way to organize your goals if you work on production is to say “when I hit this dollar amount, I’m done for the day.” The important thing is to set reasonable and attainable goals. You do not want to put yourself in a position of working over 8-9 hours in one day. That is the fast road to burnout and feeling utterly overwhelmed.

Personal and Professional Boundaries

Unfortunately, many people don’t realize when you say that you “work at home” or “run your own business at home” that you really work. I guess they think if you are at home, than it’s not really work. Well meaning friends and family may feel that since you are home, it’s okay to call or drop by. Additionally, they may try to talk you into going out shopping, or other activities that you just cannot do and still maintain a successful business. You must set healthy limits and boundaries to protect your right to work. Tell your friends and family what your working hours are and that you prefer not to have visits or personal telephone calls during those hours. If something comes up that you’d like to do with a friend during the week, then you can schedule that in by working on a normal day off. It is very important to be disciplined with yourself to be successful. Overuse of the ability to be flexible is the long road to getting off course, and ending up with a poorly run business that is not making any money.

Stress Management

Stress management and time management go hand in hand. One way to manage your time effectively is to allow a few minutes of stress reduction throughout the day. This is especially important when you are feeling overwhelmed or over-tired.


Some stress management techniques are as follows:

Ø If you tend to get overtired during your workday, it is perfectly okay to

schedule in a 30-60 minute nap. Make sure to set your alarm.

Ø Going for a brisk 10-15 walk can be quite invigorating and stress relieving.

Ø Spend a 15 minutes with a soothing piece of music. Just lay back and

Listen.

Ø Listen to a nice meditation, relaxation, or visualization CD. There are

many available that have short meditations on them.

Ø Even just consciously clearing your mind of everything and sitting in

silence for 10 minutes can be very stress relieving.

Ø Do an exercise CD or tape or use an exercise machine for 10 minutes.

Ø Sit in quiet and count your blessings out loud for 10 minutes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to your business success to manage your time efficiently and effectively. Working too little or too much are both crucial mistakes. Creating a realistic and flexible schedule is the first step to success. Knowing when to hire assistance is very important. Also, being flexible but disciplined is important. Lastly, setting healthy and firm boundaries with friends and family is also an important element to your overall success.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Starting a Home- Based Medical Billing Business

Starting a Home- Based Medical Billing Business


When a patient goes to the doctor, the doctor will dictate what happened during a visit, and a medical transcriptionist will transcribe the dictation and create the patient medical record. Then, a medical coder takes that record, and applies medical codes that health companies use to determine payment. After the coder completes the coding process, the medical biller then fills out either a paper claim thus creating the superbill or will use electronic claims submission methods to send the claim to a clearinghouse that “cleans” the claim and then it goes to the insurance company for payment. “Cleaning” a claim means catching any errors and correcting them.

This article will focus on starting an electronic claims submission business at home. Electronic claims submission is the process of taking a coded medical report and submitting it electronically to the insurance carrier. There are sophisticated software programs available like Medisoft that assist in this process.

The Submission Process in Brief

You will type in the data from each claim into the software program. At the end of your work day, you will electronically submit all the days claims in a batch to the clearinghouse. The clearing house will clean the claims and send back ones that were rejected for you to fix- this log is called the audit/error log. You then print this log and figure out how to fix the claim and resubmit.

Reasons Claims Are Rejected

Even if you do a great job, it is possible to have claims rejected. Here is a list of the common reason for rejection:

-Missing or incomplete diagnosis

-Missing or incomplete group numbers

-Charges not itemized.

-Reasons for multiple visits on the same day not given.

-Diagnosis is not coded correctly.

-Diagnosis does not correspond with the services rendered.

Start Up Costs

Figured into your initial start up expense must be comprehensive medical billing software. This type of software costs about $2,000 and will requires quarterly updates. With electronic claims submission, you will simply mostly do data entry into the software package.

Additional start up costs include the following:

-Computer system

-Printer

-Phone w/ voice mail

-Advertising expense

-Postage, stationery, and office supplies


Getting Clients

The best way to find medical billing clients is to create a flyer and do a mass mailing. You would want to send to many local area physicians. Be careful not to send too many flyers in your mailing because you can always do a second mailing and you don’t want to obtain so much business that you cannot handle it. Sending an initial 250 flyers would be appropriate for your first mailing. Then, you would want to follow up your mailing with a telephone call to the office manager. During this call, you want to ask questions to find out how the office is currently doing their billing, and are they happy with their current system. Then, you want to try to make an appointment to speak with the office manager or physician.

The way to sell electronic claims submission to a physician who is currently using on-site billing personnel and submitting claims manually through the mail are to focus on the following facts:

-30% of paper claims are rejected. Only 3% of electronic claims are

rejected.

-Paper claims take about 60 days to pay out, and if they are rejected,

another 60 days to resubmit. Electronic claims are usually paid within

just 30 days.

-He will save money on both office space and employee benefits.

You will work on a percentage of what you bring in, so you are motivated to work that much harder to assure proper claims submissions and proper billing. Plus, since your system is automated, if the physician ever becomes audited, you will be able to provide detailed reports and accounting. Additionally, you can offer to take care of all the office collections.

Organizing Your Home Business

Whenever you start up a new business, it is imperative that you make sure you are abiding by all state, local, and federal laws. You need to decide if you want to set yourself up as sole proprietor, Limited Liability Corporation, S-corp, or corporation. There are advantages and disadvantage of each of these options. You will need a way to track income and expenses. Some people like to use software programs like Quick Books to handle their business accounting. Others like to have an accountant take care of this aspect of the business. The important issue is to have a system in place. Additionally, you will need to understand which tax laws affect you, and how to handle your business income tax. Consulting with a local tax professional is very good advice for any new business start-up.

Also, many medical billing business owners buy errors and omissions insurance, which is very similar to malpractice insurance to cover them in case they get sued by a client. This usually costs around $1,500 a year depending on the risk involved.

Conclusion

Much money can be made in launching your own medical billing business at home. It would not be uncommon to bring in $8,000 a month if you had 2 medium sized practices to bill for. The start up costs are reasonable and the training time is short in comparison to most other fields. It is more difficult to obtain medical billing clients than it is to obtain for example, medical transcription clients. However, if you can learn to sell the benefits of electronic claims submission to potential clients, then you can have a very lucrative career while working at home.