The Best Medical Billing Services of 2023

We chose DrChrono as the best medical billing software for workflows because of its 96% clean claims submission rate (best in the industry), a higher-than-96% rate on claims paid in 60 days and over $3 billion in claims processed by DrChrono’s internal revenue cycle management (RCM) services to date. DrChrono’s case studies indicate that businesses that used their medical billing service saw their cash flow improve by around 40%.

Editor’s score: 8.6/10

DrChrono’s billing service promises to help you with income stability while giving you more time to look after your patients with its front-end electronic health record (EHR) billing platform and an add-on back-end internal team. Its internal team guarantees clean claims submission, 48-hour turnaround on denials and improved cash flow.

We like how DrChrono covers all aspects of medical billing in one convenient location. On the back end, its credentialed experts scrutinize clinical notes for proper ICD-10 and CPT codes to ensure you get reimbursed. They also confirm that your clinical documentation meets required compliance. DrChrono wraps it all in one, ensuring you don’t lose revenue through incorrect codes or noncompliance. Rejected claims are reworked by its experts and resubmitted within 48 hours of denial. Additionally, DrChrono’s RCM task manager helps you see real-time updates on your claims, receive payment and communicate with its team of billers whenever you want.

DrChrono matches you with a dedicated account manager who is available for questions and provides performance reports in your regular monthly one-on-one meetings. We find that appealing, since few companies can afford an in-house biller.

If you do your own billing, DrChrono gives you up-to-date reports on your practice’s performance and advice on optimizing your medical billing better (you’ll find both under the business intelligence (BI) tools hub). This ensures you know precisely where you stand and whether you’re over- or underperforming with your finances. Even those practices that hire DrChrono for back-end services can profit from these BI reports, since the two services synchronize. The internal team handles your billing while you use the front-end reports for insights to improve your finances.

We chose CareCloud as the best medical billing software for claim scrubbing because of its medical billing rules engine, seamless end-to-end integration, and ability to eliminate medical billing inefficiencies and help users collect more money in less time.

Editor’s score: 8.7/10

CareCloud’s billing software removes all the inefficiencies of the billing cycle, making your RCM process as smooth as possible. It accomplishes this with features that include claim scrubbing and submission, coding, denial resolution, centralized billing, advanced analytics and payment processing.

We like how the platform provides a quick view of all billing information, which helps you view collections data in seconds. This ensures you don’t have to dig through numerous portals or hubs to find critical information.

CareCloud integrates with scheduling and patient experience tools, along with patient payments and clearinghouses, for end-to-end reviewing, preparing, scrubbing, verifying patient information, and processing and tracking submitted claims. An analytics and reporting hub with attractive graphs and metrics shows you whether and how to improve your practice. Helpful tools include capabilities to batch patient payments for faster processing and for posting electronic remittance advice (ERA) to your patients’ accounts. Other parts of the dashboard automatically identify no-response and denied claims. The platform comes with a CollectiveIQ, or rules engine with its compilation of advanced automated billing rules, so that you can avoid errors and get paid faster.

An in-house support team is also ready to assist you with your medical billing questions. We were also impressed with CareCloud’s dedicated training that helps clients with their medical billing and prompt data migration.

CareCloud also includes talkEHR, which is designed specifically for physical therapy (PT) practices. This enhanced platform integrates with CareCloud Remote, improving PT practices’ revenue and billing processes.

Google has recognized the platform as Chrome Enterprise Recommended, which confirms that talkEHR meets all of Google’s state-of-the-art testing and security standards. It also verifies that talkEHR is fully compatible with the ChromeOS ecosystem.

We chose Kareo as the best medical billing software for tracking claims because its functionalities help medical providers automate and track payments, seamlessly submit to clearinghouses, and collect outstanding bills from patients.  Kareo is a user-friendly, highly customizable piece of software that helps practices across the spectrum create a billing and reporting system that meets their needs.

Editor’s score: 8.6/10

Designed for independent and new practices, Kareo’s billing functionality helps medical providers automate and track payments, seamlessly submit to clearinghouses, and collect outstanding bills from patients. The dashboard’s functionality helps you enter charges, check coding, and send insurance claims and patient statements. It also enables you to process credit cards, automatically post payments, print reports, manage denials and collections, load fees and contracts, scan documents, and more.

We like how Kareo’s billing capabilities integrate with its EHR and patient portals (learn more in our review of Kareo’s medical software) so that you can see all medical billing-related data in one view. Providers submit their charges through KareoClinical, from which billers instantly get these records at the practice management back end to bill out.

Kareo’s medical billing system is all-encompassing and on demand because (like its competitors) it’s cloud-based, which means it’s available 24/7 with real-time reports. Kareo also collates reports from across its system so that you can see your patient data at a glance along with the status of claims, without needing to log in to other data sets.  This includes live information, such as whether the patient made copays, kept appointments and has active insurance. You can also audit their schedule to make sure you have all their partner billing. Another Kareo billing tool helps you check codes against industry standards and payer-specific reimbursement rules, as well as access a knowledge-base of coding, compliance and reimbursement rules.

The “insurance claims” tool processes your electronic claims to more than 2,500 government and commercial insurers, prints paper claims when necessary, and helps you receive claim processing reports with frequent status updates. Denial and collections management enables you to track unpaid insurance claims and automatically flag denials.

With Kareo, you can manage multiple practices, set up users and role-based security, manage insurance lists, and manage code sets such as CPT, HCPCS and ICD-9 from one convenient location. Unlike DrChrono and AdvancedMD, Kareo has no in-house medical billing option, but it optimizes your billing process and matches you with high-performance medical billing services if required.

ChartLogic is our choice for the best medical billing software for free implementation because its vendors dedicate themselves to making the onboarding and training as simple as possible. The entire onboarding process takes no longer than six weeks and is meticulously customized for your practice. Training is quick and straightforward, and the interface is user-friendly. Users can start using the software right away. Support staff is available for ongoing support and challenges. ChartLogic is perfect for the tech-panicky individual.

Editor’s score: 8.5/10

We chose AdvancedMD as the best medical billing software for ease of use because its platform uses a color-coded system that makes it simple to navigate. There are extensive code libraries for reference, and all claims are handled by its internal back-end team, which organizes your records in prioritized worklists, giving you visibility throughout the entire claims submission process.

Editor’s score: 8.5/10

AdvancedMD’s industry-proven clearinghouse and claims scrubber promise to help you achieve at least a 95% first-pass acceptance rate. Its platform’s “claim inspector” feature automatically scrubs each claim and identifies potential errors prior to submission, saving hours on appeals and lost reimbursement. AdvancedMD’s dashboard also feeds you the status of all claim runs in real time, as well as shows you worklists of unbilled claims with missing or incorrect data. AdvancedMD stops the process when affected claims are identified. Common claim errors are automatically recognized. Clearinghouse exclusions are also automatically organized in a certain waitlist, while running alerts give you better visibility over problem payors so you can shorten the payment cycle.

When it comes to remittance, the billing dashboard shows the carrier payments that have been received electronically and the patients associated with them. You can auto-post directly to a patient’s account with a single click, helping you review the remittance details of each claim and their key items, such as the patient’s date of service, contracted amount, patient balance and so forth. AdvancedMD’s dashboard also allows you to process credit cards stored on file and send out patient statements and collection letters, among other functions.

Other valuable tools include the ability to have electronic remittance advice (ERA) documentation included alongside write-off calculations to ensure proper payment collection. Additionally, you can also include documents directly alongside claims. Both of these features help simplify and streamline your on-staff coder’s portion of the medical billing process.

AthenaCollector is our choice for the best medical billing software for new practices because its medical billing portal is intuitive and easy to use. Front-office staff can log in to see appointment requests, upcoming appointments and other clinical documents from one convenient location. Its dashboard gives you instant access to over 100,000 healthcare providers and close to 100 million patients, with alerts that notify you of data changes in real time. There’s also a library of around 50 million rules to help you with medical coding. 

Editor’s score: 8.7/10

AthenaCollector’s billing portal offers some unprecedented benefits that competitors lack. Specifically, the service scrubs claims within a few seconds of receipt and promises to reimburse you in at least three working days. Also – and this is huge – if athenaCollector fails to get 95% of your denied claims accepted within 10 days, it guarantees a refund. Third, athenahealth handles your service-level agreements (SLAs) for full reimbursement. Finally, it pursues underpaid or unpaid claims, making sure you collect on every cent owed. 

We like how athenaCollector’s reporting hub helps you view medical billing reports on a monthly or weekly basis with live information on accounts receivable, collections, and common causes for denial or delay. Its analytics compares your practice’s billing performance against those of other practices that use athenaCollector so that you can see how you stack up. Further, the software’s continuously updated rules engine catches claims errors before they’re made, resulting in a 93% first-pass resolution rate.

Additional services include dedicated training with its medical billing functionalities and active support. While DrChrono and AdvancedMD handle your billing internally, athenaCollector differs in that it outsources your claims and reviews them for accuracy before submitting those scrubbed reports to insurers. It’s the middle ground between referring you to outsourced billers, such as Kareo does, and scrubbing your claims in-house. 

CureMD offers one of the most intuitive, flexible dashboards for setting and tracking your practice’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Regardless of your practice’s specialty or size, you can adjust its KPIs and targets, then track their progress as CureMD performs charge entry, coding, claim submission and denial management.

Editor’s score: 8.6/10

MedicsPremier, a software platform and medical billing service from the Advanced Data Systems Corporation (ADSC), is an effective choice for growing practices looking for a competitively priced solution. For one thing, MedicsPremier begins your service with a test run on 50 to 100 patients, ensuring all vital elements of your billing operations (such as insurance eligibility verification and patient statements) are running smoothly. This is key for scaling operations, helping you guarantee your systems won’t break when your claims volume increases.

Editor’s score: 8.2/10