Medical Billing Career from Home; Managing a Healthy Balance Between Work & Family Time

A home-office based medical billing career can offer some flexibility in work hours. To optimize your productivity and professional drive, it is important to examine some of your working "conditions", if you will.
Do you leave the primary areas of your home and go through the excercises of "going to work" for the day?
Maintaining a normal 40 hour work schedule and dedicated routine is incredibly important in maximizing your productivity. I recognized this early on and set up my electronic claims processing firm in a completely secluded area in my home. I spend family time in the morning, get the children off to school/daycare, get dressed for the day and technically "get to work" by 8:30 each day. I have a dedicated area, PC, phone line and other medical billing-specific office supplies in my work area. Having such a space set up effectively helped me tremendously in becoming successful. When I began my medical billing career, I found myself working very early in the morning (often in my PJ's) through really late into the evenings (back in my PJ's). During sleep, I would often dream about processing claims and meeting doctors at networking events. This is not necessarily healthy, especially if those dreams go beyond the initial excitement period of opening a business. I cannot stress enough the NEED to end my day at a normal time - 5 or 5:30 pm. It is imperative to have the space and TIME for client contact, business processes, and administrative duties. Also, allotted space and time for home life, family events and simply "being" with family. During the first month of opening my business, the cable television service in our main family living area was broken for an entire week and I did not know it - this was a quick awakening for me! I wasn't even watching the occasional news program to stay abreast in today's stories! I was rushing through dinner and NOT spending quality time with my family - all to jam-pack as much as humanly possible into a day - or in this case, night. These types of habits can prove detrimental as a medical biller. Our tasks can be daunting enough without the added stress of extra-long days and having "not enough time" to get done what needs to be done. One can "burn out" rapidly trying to maintain such a demanding schedule, which is utterly impossible to keep! Once I recognized the habit that could have potentially soured my taste to this most lucrative industry, I got some help and some guidance. The end-all message to you is to operate in an official and productive office, do your best to keep a normal 8 hour schedule, and don't be afraid to ask for and PAY for quality help.

The one place that I found that truly helps answer the "Now What?" questions about running my business was a foundation totally dedicated to medical billing success; http://www.MedicalBillingFoundation.com. This site not only offered documents, tips, plans, proposal samples, as well as advise on networking, effective marketing, an more - it also offered a detailed (down to the HOUR) plan of what exactly to do during the first full month in business as a medical biller! The membership costs are VERY reasonable and the information that comes from the foundation is invaluable. The reason? The data was collectively provided by successful medical billers from all over the country so that a NEW medical biller like me didn't have to waste time reinventing the wheel! I chose to purchase the tools made available to me ONCE instead of spending thousands on attorney fees alone creating my own, individual necessary documents and marketing tools.