What Is an EBO and Why Do You Need One?

​​If your company is seeking payment solutions, you may have come across the acronym “EBO” and wondered what it is.

EBO stands for “Extended Business Office,” and that’s exactly...

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What Is an EBO and Why Do You Need One?

EBOs: First-Party Collections
for Healthcare Providers

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If your company is seeking payment solutions, you may have come across the acronym “EBO” and wondered what it is. EBO stands for “Extended Business Office,” and that’s exactly what it is – an extension of your business office. 
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EBO teams offer first-party collections for healthcare revenue-cycle management. Their goal is to increase your cash flow by resolving accounts receivable before they become bad debts.

Why Would You Need an EBO?

Hospitals and other healthcare providers face unique challenges today. Reimbursement has become more complex than ever. Continually changing regulatory requirements have increased the administrative burden on both providers and facilities.

Every year, healthcare providers lose a percentage of their net income because of system/software limitations, competing priorities and limited staff. An effective EBO team can provide customized collection solutions while also developing processes that will help meet your business goals. An EBO offers best practices in all areas of the revenue cycle -- from ongoing billing and collection to denied-claim resolution.

In other words, EBOs bridge the gap between healthcare practices and business office management.

Menu of EBO Services

EBO services typically include the following:

Patient Access
Pre-registering patients and verifying insurance, enrolling patients in managed care programs, offering pre-service financial counseling, preparing and issuing patient statements. EBOs relieve the provider’s office of these responsibilities, freeing up their staff for more crucial tasks.
 
Insurance
Determining the extent of a patient’s benefits, recovering insurance balances (including government, charity processing and workers’ comp reimbursement), resolving denied claims, monitoring payments, executing appeals and claim rebilling. Effective EBOs will tailor these services for specific account aging and balance ranges.

Self-Pay Accounts
Resolving private-payer accounts, monitoring bill repayment plans, motivating patients to stay current, alerting patients when a payment is due via calls and/or letters.   Effective EBOs will represent their provider-clients in a way that’s both compassionate and professional in all communications with the patients.
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​Customer Service: Key to a Successful EBO

As you may have guessed, customer service is critical to successful EBO. In fact, an effective EBO can help providers get closer to their patients and increase patient satisfaction. How? By enhancing both written and telephone communications with customized processes, and by offering customer service expertise from their seasoned professionals. 

EBO team members possess a solid understanding of revenue-cycle management. When you outsource to an EBO, you gain access to expertise that your practice or facility may not currently have.

But effective EBOs not only maintain key revenue and operating metrics for their client companies. They can also reduce or eliminate gaps in the system, by providing an outside eye to identify root causes of payment delays. 
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​Benefits of an Extended Business Office

Many healthcare providers who work with EBOs witness immediate revenue improvements, as well as reduced operating expenses.​​​

Benefits you can expect include:

• Improved cash flow​​
• Reduced overhead expenses
• Fewer labor concerns
• Reduction in bad-debt expenses
• Billing transparency for patients
• Fewer inbound phone calls
• Reduced accounts receivable days
• Improved downstream impacts due to detailed reporting
• Higher revenue recovery rate
• Better resolution of denied claims
• ​Higher success rate for insurance claim appeals
• Improved customer relations
• Ensured compliance with all governmental regulations​​​​​​​​

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The Bottom Line Is...

EBOs enable providers to operate more efficiently, so they can focus on caring for the lives of the people they serve within their communities.

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