It’s practically undebatable that vast financial pressures are affecting most U.S. doctors negatively – one of these is the need for ever more expensive malpractice insurance, along with current guidelines for medical care that some doctors feel are unfairly based on strict conditions related more to avoiding liability than to actually curing the patient. While this kind of economic and philosophical problem is a huge one for doctors, it’s not the only reason that many of them are choosing to shutter their practices and move into other jobs. There’s also the explosion of complicated protocols and contractual obligations related to billing insurance companies, which is becoming a greater share of accounts receivable for the typical doctor’s office. Then there are the many growing issues with collecting from patients, as American families continue to feel the sting of the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent recession, along with high unemployment.

But although there are a number of very real reasons for doctors to give up their independent practices, there’s also a large emotional side of this choice for many of the doctors who decide to leave their profession, or get into an employee situation, such as a hospitalist’s job, with less responsibilities for managing provider administration. Doctors simply feel overburdened and overwhelmed, and in some cases, they may not be relying on partners that could help them rejuvenate a struggling practice. Third-party medical billing consulting firms and other enterprises are built to help doctors outsource some of the headaches of the medical profession, so that they can focus on healing patients, while benefiting from best current practices for billing and collecting money. This is definitely something to think about for doctors to really don’t want to stop doing what they have been doing, and who feel invested in the medical profession. It’s a scary world for today’s physician, but many doctors are finding that by using competent and competitive third-party services, they don’t have to go it alone.