Building Restoration Insurance Billing Processes to be Scalable

Graphic showing a restoration company's growth as they scale their restoration insurance billing processes

When your restoration company is growing, it stretches your team and your processes. You may have had a restoration insurance billing process that worked well for you at one point, but that doesn’t always mean it will be scalable and continue to serve your company’s best interests. Scaling your restoration company’s claims management doesn’t just mean hiring more people. It also means designing your process to be scalable. At One Claim Solution, we’ve dedicated years to building scalable, effective restoration billing management processes, so we understand how tricky that can be. Here are some tips from our experts on how to create billing processes in your company that will fit your company both now and down the road.

Why Claims Processes Break When You Grow

Your billing processes could have been working, but then you started taking on more water damage jobs and team members, and they began to fall apart. So what happened?

Growing pains are natural as your company grows. It’s understandable that the processes you’ve designed to guide your claims billing work worked best when your company was still the same size as it was when the processes were created. But what starts as an efficient system when your team is small can quickly become a bottleneck when you begin taking on more jobs. Growth will always magnify the already existing weaknesses in your process.

When your billing processes are specifically designed with scalability in mind, these growing pains will be less painful. Are your restoration insurance billing processes scalable? Here are some signs that your current process might not be scalable:

Your process relies on a team member’s memory.
Your process relies heavily on individual relationships with adjusters.
There is limited visibility into claims that are stalled.
Claims are getting lost or delayed.
Documentation isn’t handled consistently from one technician to the next.
Your billing team relies heavily on one team member who “knows everything.”

None of these problems will go away when your company starts to grow. More likely than not, the problems will only get worse. So if your restoration insurance billing process isn’t scalable, now is the time to fix that.

The Solution: Designing Scalable Restoration Insurance Billing Processes

So what does a scalable claims billing process look like? A scalable claims process is a process that any employee, with training, can follow and achieve consistent results. Here is how you design a scalable restoration insurance billing process:

Document Every Step of the Process Clearly: Write down how claims flow from the field to billing to follow-up. Include who owns each task and what “done” looks like. That documentation becomes your team’s roadmap and training manual.
Standardize Your Communication Methods: How do you want technicians to deliver and organize job documentation? How should your claims team communicate with adjusters? The fewer exceptions you make, the easier it is to track the communication and scale your restoration insurance billing process.
Track the Process, Not Just the Outcome: Use technology to record when each phase of the claims management process is completed. You should be able to easily find when an invoice was submitted, an adjuster was contacted, or a claim was paid. This data is invaluable for building a strong claims process.
Build Feedback Loops into Your Process: Set up regular times to review your claims process with your team. Figure out where you’re seeing claims get stuck or what line items are getting more pushback from adjusters and needing further documentation. Use what you find to improve your process further.
Get Creative About Using Automation: Automation can be one of your biggest tools for scalability when used thoughtfully. Automated reminders, task assignments, and progress tracking can help ensure claims don’t slip through the cracks. However, automation should never replace the judgment and communication that make your claims team effective.
Train for Your Team on the Process: Even the best restoration insurance billing process won’t be scalable if people don’t understand why it exists and how it works. Help each team member see how their role fits into the larger picture. Provide resources that your team members can reference to find the next step in the process.
Track & Analyze Claims Data: You should be tracking all kinds of billing metrics, including your average days to payment, follow-up frequency, claims denial rate, and more. These metrics will help you catch small issues before they become big ones and adjust your process to better fit the day-to-day reality of your team’s claims workload.

Know When to Explore External Restoration Insurance Billing Expertise

Even the best internal restoration insurance billing processes have limits. When your team is overwhelmed or you are growing faster than you can adjust your processes and expand your team, it might be time to explore bringing in experts who already have a scalable system and great processes in place.

On a podcast episode all about our processes at One Claim Solution, OCS Co-Founder and General Counsel Josh Ehmke said, “Insurance companies are amazing with their processes… For contractors to be able to have something like that in their corner, too, [is a] fantastic opportunity.” One Claim Solution provides strategic, tested, and scalable restoration insurance billing processes for every restoration contractor that they work with.

If your restoration company is growing and you’re exploring ways to scale your restoration insurance billing, OCS might be the answer. Reach out to us today to learn more.