Q: What does an in-house claims follow-up hire cost a practice?

US billing and posting clerks earn a median $48,500 a year, and the fully loaded cost with insurance, paid leave, legally required benefits, supplemental pay, and retirement runs to about $72,072 a year (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025). That figure covers recurring pay only, not equipment, space, or the cost of filling the seat. Honest Taskers charges $10.00 to $12.65 an hour for the same follow-up work, billed for hours worked with no employer load.

Is claims follow-up the same as denial management?

No, claims follow-up checks the status of claims that haven't been paid yet, while denial management works claims a payer has already rejected. A follow-up specialist catches a denial and routes it to the appeals process rather than working the appeal directly. The two are related queues with different timelines and often different people.

What does a claims follow-up specialist do day to day?

A claims follow-up specialist checks payer portals for claim status, calls payers when a portal shows no update, and works through an accounts receivable aging report on a set schedule. The role also corrects clearinghouse rejections and resubmits claims that never reached the payer. It stops short of appealing a denial, which is a separate task.

How does a follow-up specialist decide which claims to work first?

A follow-up specialist sorts the worklist by dollar amount and days outstanding, working the highest-value, oldest claims first. Claims nearing a payer's timely filing deadline move to the top regardless of size, since a missed deadline turns a workable claim into a write-off. Smaller claims still get worked, just later, once the larger accounts are moving.

Can a remote claims follow-up specialist handle every part of the job?

No, a remote specialist can't collect a co-pay at checkout, handle a patient's physical mail, or make the call on writing off a balance. Portal checks, payer calls, and aging report review all move well to a remote hire. The tasks that need a body in the building or a management decision stay in-house.

How soon can a remote claims follow-up specialist start?

Most Honest Taskers placements complete within one to three weeks of a signed agreement, and the first specialist comes with a two-week working trial. Recruiting an in-house billing and posting clerk typically takes longer before onboarding even begins. The aged claims queue keeps growing during that gap either way.

Are claims follow-up specialists HIPAA compliant?

Yes, a claims follow-up specialist can work within a HIPAA-compliant arrangement when a BAA is signed and system access stays practice-controlled. The safeguards that make that work include documented HIPAA and data-privacy training, signed confidentiality agreements, and remote-work security screening. The practice still controls which systems and patient data the specialist can reach. You can read more on whether a virtual assistant can be HIPAA compliant.

Can a claims follow-up specialist work in my EHR and billing system?

Yes, claims follow-up specialists routinely work inside a practice's existing EHR, though experience with any specific system varies by candidate. Many bring prior time in billing and practice management tools such as athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Kareo, and AdvancedMD, plus clearinghouse portals. Access is granted and controlled by your practice, so confirm your stack during the interview.

What does a claims follow-up specialist do?

A claims follow-up specialist checks claim status with payers, resubmits corrected claims, works aging and accounts receivable reports, and escalates stuck claims. Many also document each payer call and flag denials for appeal. They follow your worklists and route coding or clinical questions to the right staff.

Can a claims follow-up specialist reduce accounts receivable days?

Yes, a claims follow-up specialist reduces accounts receivable days by chasing unpaid claims early, resubmitting corrections quickly, and keeping aging claims off the write-off pile. Consistent daily follow-up is the main lever, which is easier with a dedicated specialist than with billing squeezed between clinical duties.

How does Honest Taskers staff claims follow-up specialists?

Honest Taskers screens candidates on US healthcare experience, communication, and its five core values, then trains them on HIPAA and data privacy before placement. The pool includes licensed nurses and physicians, and specialists check claim status, resubmit corrected claims, work aging reports, and escalate stuck claims while routing coding questions to your billing lead. The company signs a Business Associate Agreement when the professional will access PHI and schedules staff in the client's time zone. Learn how a healthcare-focused virtual professional can support your practice.

How fast can you hire a claims follow-up specialist?

Most companies place a claims follow-up specialist within a few days to two weeks, and some advertise faster. CareVMA Health reports a 48-hour match (company-reported, checked August 2026). Timelines depend on the role, the screening depth, and your interview process.

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Last updated: 2026-09-24

Deciding who should chase an unpaid claim starts with the job itself, so the first question is what a claims follow-up specialist chases once a claim goes unpaid. From there the queue needs an order, which is why the next question is which unpaid claims a follow-up specialist works first by dollar and age. Reading the queue depends on how a follow-up specialist reads an accounts receivable aging report, and keeping a claim moving depends on the cadence that keeps it moving through the payer instead of going stale. Some of that work still needs a person at the front desk, and naming which tasks stay there matters before anything gets priced. Cost follows scope, so the next two questions are what an in-house claims follow-up hire costs a practice in total and what a remote claims follow-up specialist costs per hour for the same coverage. Between those numbers sits what an untouched claim costs once it ages beyond the point a payer will still pay it. Timing is next, starting with how soon a remote specialist can work down an aged claims queue. The last two practical questions are how a practice should choose for claims follow-up and when it makes sense to keep some of that work in-house. Where these cost figures come from closes things out.

What does a claims follow-up specialist chase after a claim goes unpaid?

A claims follow-up specialist chases the status of every claim that left the practice's system without a payment or a denial posted against it. The work starts in the payer portal, checking whether a claim shows as received, in process, denied, or missing from the payer's queue entirely. Where the portal gives no clear answer, the specialist calls the payer's provider line, gets a reference number, and writes down what the representative said needs to happen next. Some of what turns up is a clearinghouse rejection that never reached the payer at all, which needs a correction and a resubmission rather than a phone call. Practices often outsource this role to a virtual medical assistant with billing background, since the job runs entirely inside the practice management system and the payer's own web tools rather than at a counter. None of this is denial management yet. That work starts once a claim comes back denied, moving onto an appeal with its own timeline and its own paperwork.

Which unpaid claims does a follow-up specialist work first by dollar and age?

A follow-up specialist works the highest-dollar claims first, then layers in age, because a $4,000 claim sitting at 45 days deserves more attention than a $60 claim sitting at 90. The worklist gets sorted by payer, dollar amount, and days outstanding, with claims nearing a payer's timely filing deadline pulled to the top regardless of size, since a missed deadline turns a workable claim into a written-off one overnight. Denied claims, pending-information claims, and claims sitting with no response at all each get a different next action, so the sort isn't just biggest-first. Payer mix matters too, so a specialist works claims from a slow payer earlier in the week, giving a response time to land before the next review lands on the calendar. Small claims still get worked, just later, in batches, once the accounts carrying real dollars are moving again.

How does a follow-up specialist read an accounts receivable aging report?

A follow-up specialist reads an accounts receivable aging report by scanning the 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 90-plus day columns for balances drifting into the older buckets without a status note attached. Most dollars in a healthy report sit in the 0-30 column, moving through on their own; growth in the 90-plus column means claims are stalling somewhere in the payer's system and nobody is chasing them down. The specialist checks the payer name against each aging balance, since one slow payer can carry most of a practice's older dollars while the rest of the payer mix moves normally. Last-activity date matters as much as the balance itself. One claim sitting at 60 days with an activity note from yesterday is being worked; the same balance with no note in three weeks is not, and that gap is what the aging report exists to surface.

What cadence keeps an open claim moving through the payer?

A predictable cadence keeps an open claim moving by checking payer status around day 15, following up by phone if nothing has changed by day 30, and escalating to a supervisor call by day 45 if the claim still shows no movement. Skip that schedule and the claim drifts to the bottom of somebody's queue, aging past the point it can still be worked cheaply. Every touch gets logged with the date, the person spoken to, and what they said, so the next check picks up where the last one left off instead of starting over from zero. Where the payer response is a denial instead of a delay, the claim leaves this cadence entirely and moves into an appeal, which our guide to how a virtual assistant works denials and appeals covers on its own. Following up and appealing are different jobs with different timelines, and a practice that treats them as one queue loses track of both.

Which follow-up tasks still need a person at the front desk?

A remote follow-up specialist can't collect a patient co-pay at checkout, pull a paper explanation of benefits out of today's mail, or walk a claim over to the front-desk staff member who logged the original visit. Anything needing a body in the building for a patient or a piece of paper stays on-site, and that's the honest limit before any cost gets compared.

Handling a patient's physical mail, faxed explanations of benefits, or paper remits.
Confirming eligibility face to face when a patient walks in with a card that doesn't match the file.
Pulling a chart from a physical filing system to settle a documentation dispute with a payer.
Deciding how a practice writes off a balance, which stays a management decision.

Keep the role in-house where most of it sits in front-desk or clinical hands. It can move where the work is portal checks, phone calls, and aging report review.

What does an in-house claims follow-up hire cost a practice in total?

An in-house claims follow-up hire costs far more than the posted salary once the employer load is added on top. US billing and posting clerks earned a median $48,500 a year (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics", May 2025, occupation code 43-3021). The employer load on top is broken out separately below so nothing gets counted twice (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation", March 2026).

What one in-house claims follow-up hire costs a US practice per year at the national median wage.
Cost line	What it covers	On top of wages	Per year
Base salary	The advertised pay for the role	n/a	$48,500
Insurance	Health and related coverage	17.5%	$8,488
Paid leave	Vacation, sick days and holidays	11.9%	$5,772
Legally required	Employer FICA, unemployment, workers' compensation	10.2%	$4,947
Supplemental pay	Overtime, bonuses and shift differentials	4.5%	$2,183
Retirement and savings	Employer contributions and match	4.5%	$2,183
All-in recurring	What the seat costs before equipment or space	48.7%	about $72,072

Filling the seat costs an average $5,475 per hire for non-executive roles (Source: SHRM, "2025 Benchmarking Report"), and that cost lands again on every replacement, since a single in-house follow-up hire is also a single point of failure while a claim sits waiting.

What does a remote claims follow-up specialist cost per hour?

A remote claims follow-up specialist costs $10.00 to $12.65 an hour at Honest Taskers, billed for the hours worked with no employer load added on top. At 40 hours a week that runs about $20,800 to $26,312 a year, and at 20 hours a week about $10,400 to $13,156, with no payroll tax, no benefits load, and no paid leave sitting underneath either figure. Claims follow-up rarely needs a full 40 hours in a small practice, so the hourly model fits a queue sized at 15 or 20 hours a week without forcing a full-time hire to cover it. Many other queues move just as well to a remote hire alongside claims follow-up, such as the tasks to outsource to a virtual medical assistant. Compare the hourly total against the in-house table using local wages before deciding, since a rich benefits package pushes the in-house side well above the national median used here.

What does an untouched claim cost once it ages beyond collection?

An untouched claim costs the practice its full billed amount once it ages past the payer's timely filing deadline, because a claim submitted or appealed after that window is denied for timeliness with no appeal that reverses it. Timely filing deadlines run anywhere from 90 days to a year depending on the payer and the contract, so a claim left untouched that long has usually already missed its best chance at a clean, fast payment. Many of these write-offs trace back to a claim denied at submission and never resubmitted in time, a gap our guide to how to reduce claim denials covers directly. Whatever pull a phone call at day 30 would have carried is gone too once a claim ages past 90 days without a touch, since the payer's own record has gone cold. Once a claim crosses into write-off territory, the practice absorbs the full amount, not a discounted one, which is why the cadence in the earlier section exists in the first place.

How soon can a remote specialist work down an aged claims queue?

A remote specialist can start working a claims queue within one to three weeks of a signed agreement for most Honest Taskers placements, with the first specialist covered by a two-week working trial before anything further gets committed. That trial period tests the specialist against the practice's own aging report and payer mix rather than a generic test, so the practice sees actual movement on real claims before deciding anything is permanent. Recruiting an in-house billing and posting clerk in most US markets takes longer than that before onboarding even starts, and the aged claims sit untouched the entire time. Honest Taskers reports 99.6% average monthly retention, so once a queue is moving, it tends to keep moving rather than resetting every few months to a new hire learning the payer mix from scratch.

How should a practice choose for claims follow-up?

A practice should choose for claims follow-up by sizing the queue before pricing anything, since the size of the backlog decides more than any rate card does. Start by counting how many claims sit past 30 days and what they total in dollars, because a small aging report with a handful of stuck claims needs occasional attention, not a dedicated hire. Then check how much of the work is portal checks and payer phone calls, versus work needing a person on-site. For the full pricing detail before setting a budget, see our guide to how much a virtual medical assistant costs. An hourly specialist fits the workload without the fixed cost of a full-time seat where the remote column holds most of the hours. That backlog, growing faster than staff can keep up with, is a scope problem no schedule change will fix on its own, and it's worth pricing a dedicated queue owner rather than splitting the work thinner across existing staff.

When does a practice keep some follow-up work in-house?

A practice keeps some follow-up work in-house when the claim needs a decision only a manager can make, such as writing off a balance, negotiating a payer contract dispute, or approving a patient payment plan. The pattern that works best keeps those judgment calls in-house while a remote specialist runs the portal checks, the phone follow-ups, and the aging report review that make up most of the queue's hours. That split leaves in-house staff free for the calls only they're positioned to make, while the remote hire keeps the routine touches from slipping past their scheduled day. Practices that move the whole follow-up function at once, judgment calls included, tend to end up routing those decisions back to a manager anyway, just later and with less context than if the split had been drawn up front.

Where do these claims follow-up cost figures come from?

Wages for this comparison come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program for May 2025, occupation code 43-3021, billing and posting clerks. Employer load percentages come from the same agency's Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series for March 2026, office and administrative support occupations in private industry, applied as separate components so paid leave and legally required benefits aren't counted twice. Cost per hire comes from SHRM's 2025 Benchmarking Report. Honest Taskers rates come from the company's own published rate card rather than a third-party estimate. Every figure here is a national median, so all of them move with local wages and the specific payer mix a practice works.

For this same in-house-versus-remote math run on a general administrative role rather than claims follow-up, see our virtual assistant vs in-house employee cost comparison.

Talk to Honest Taskers about who should be chasing your unpaid claims.

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Last updated: 2026-08-24

Honest Taskers, AGS Health, and Transcure lead this year's shortlist of claims follow-up specialist companies, seven firms ranked on how they chase unpaid claims to resolution, from working an aged accounts receivable worklist and calling payers to checking portal status, requesting the documentation a payer says is missing, and escalating the claims that have simply stalled. Four purchase shapes appear here: hourly staff, a flat weekly seat, a percentage of what gets collected, and software that tells your own team where to look. Below we set out whether follow-up should be staffed, outsourced or automated, why the mistakes are quiet, how it is priced, whether a partner is paid in a way that matches your backlog, and what shape that backlog is.

Disclosure: Honest Taskers publishes this list and appears at position 1. We're judged on the same five published criteria as every other company here.

At a glance

1Honest Taskers
2AGS Health
3Transcure
4Plutus Health
5Neolytix
6Coronis Health
7Waystar

How we chose the best claims follow-up specialist companies

We ranked these firms on five facts, each read at the provider's own website in August 2026. Those facts are which follow-up work is performed, what credentials or certifications are stated, published pricing, the purchase model, and named compliance. Purchase model does most of the sorting here, because claims follow-up is the one revenue cycle task where the pricing shape changes the incentive. A firm paid a percentage of collections wants your aged claims worked; a firm paid per seat is indifferent to whether they get paid. That is not a moral point, it is a contract design point, and it should decide which column you read first. Blank facts read "not publicly listed" instead of a guess.

Best claims follow-up specialist companies compared

The table ranks all 7 on the same columns, Honest Taskers first because we publish the list. Facts were read August 2026 and change often, so treat them as a starting point, not a quote.

Claims follow-up specialist companies compared on the criteria stated below, read at each provider's own site.
Company	Claims follow-up work covered	Credential or certification stated	Published pricing	Purchase model	Compliance named
Honest Taskers	Claims status calls, payer portal checks, worklist preparation, documentation requests, denial logging and escalation	None claimed for coding; pool includes licensed nurses and physicians	$10.00–$12.65/hr	Staffing by the hour	Compliance officer; HIPAA compliance verified by Accountable; BAA when PHI is accessed
AGS Health	Claims, accounts receivable, denials, prior authorization, coding, provider enrollment, CDI	"Cybersecurity Transparent Designation 2023"; no coder credential named	Not publicly listed	Outsourced service	Named designation only; no SOC 2, ISO or HITRUST
Transcure	RCM covering billing, coding, audits, eligibility, MIPS, credentialing	AAPC-certified billers and coders (company-reported)	3% to 5% of monthly collections	Percentage of collections	ISO 27001 (company-reported)
Plutus Health	Denial management, AR management, claim submission and scrubbing, complex claims, NSA independent dispute resolution	AAPC-certified audits referenced; 99.2% coding accuracy threshold	Not publicly listed	Outsourced service plus AI agents	HIPAA; SOC 2 Type II
Neolytix	RCM including AR and denials, coding audit, credentialing, provider enrollment, virtual assistants	Not publicly listed	Not publicly listed	Outsourced service plus staffing	ISO 27001 certified; HIPAA stated
Coronis Health	Medical billing and coding, RCM, claims and AR follow-up	Not publicly listed	Not publicly listed	Outsourced service	Not publicly listed
Waystar	Claim Manager, Claim Monitoring, Denial and Appeal Management, Recoupment Manager, Medicare Management	Not applicable; your staff work the queues	Not publicly listed	Software license	HIPAA, SOC 2, HITRUST, PCI-DSS

Two firms publish a price and they publish opposite structures: a percentage of collections that only pays if the claim does, and a flat hourly rate that pays regardless. One entry is software, which matters because a great deal of claims follow-up spend goes on people doing work a worklist tool should have prioritized. Note also that the two firms with ISO 27001 or SOC 2 Type II are both offshore-delivered, and the enterprise firm named for the largest health systems publishes the weakest security designation of the three.

1. Honest Taskers

Best for: practices that want a named person working their aged accounts receivable worklist inside their own system, during payer business hours.

Pricing: $10.00–$12.65/hrLocation: US clients; PH, LatAm, India and Pakistan recruitingModel: Staffing by the hourFirst hire: Two-week working trial

Claims follow-up is a volume job with a decay curve. A claim worked at 35 days usually gets paid; the same claim at 180 days often does not, and the reason it aged is almost never that it was complicated. It is that nobody had time. Honest Taskers places staff who work inside your practice management system on exactly that queue: pulling the aged accounts receivable worklist and working it oldest and largest first, calling payers and sitting in the phone queue, checking claim status in payer portals, requesting the records or documentation a payer says is missing, logging every denial reason so patterns become visible, and escalating the claims that need a decision rather than another call. Because staff work your time zone, those payer calls happen when payers answer. Staff are trained on HIPAA and data privacy under a dedicated compliance officer, and a Business Associate Agreement is signed before anyone touches protected health information, with HIPAA compliance verified by Accountable. Rates run about $10 to $12.65 an hour by role, background, schedule, and location, with a two-week working trial on the first hire and 99.6% average monthly retention reported. See the virtual medical billing service for role detail.

Limitation: this is staffing, so your team still owns the payer strategy, the appeal arguments, and the collection outcome, and the firm names no AAPC or AHIMA credential and no SOC 2 or ISO certification of the kind competitors here publish.

2. AGS Health

Best for: hospitals and large groups that want claims, accounts receivable, and denials handled inside one enterprise engagement.

Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: HQ Washington DC; delivery ChennaiModel: Outsourced serviceClients: Banner Health, Baylor Scott & White

AGS Health covers the widest span on this list, naming claims, accounts receivable, and denials alongside coding, prior authorization, provider enrollment and credentialing, and clinical documentation improvement. For an organization whose accounts receivable problem is six problems in a row, that breadth is the argument: the same firm that finds the denial pattern can fix the coding that caused it. Its named clients include Banner Health and Baylor Scott & White, which tells you the scale it is built for. Headquarters are in Washington DC with a delivery center in Chennai, India.

Limitation: it is built for health systems rather than practices, publishes no pricing, and names only a Cybersecurity Transparent Designation from 2023 rather than SOC 2, ISO 27001, or HITRUST.

3. Transcure

Best for: practices that want the firm paid only when the claim is, and are comfortable with cost rising alongside revenue.

Pricing: 3% to 5% of monthly collectionsLocation: Texas, New Jersey, FloridaModel: Percentage of collectionsScale: 1,100+ certified billers and coders

Transcure is the only firm here whose published price is contingent on results: 3% to 5% of monthly collections. On aged claims specifically that alignment is worth real money, because a percentage-paid firm has a reason to work the ninety-day bucket that a per-seat arrangement does not. Its whole revenue cycle work covers billing, coding, audits, MIPS, eligibility, and credentialing across more than 40 specialties, from small independent practices through health systems, with offices in Texas, New Jersey, and Florida and more than 1,100 certified billers and coders. It states ISO 27001 and AAPC-certified billers and coders, both company-reported.

Limitation: percentage pricing means cost grows with revenue, which suits a growing practice less well than a flat rate, and it takes over the whole revenue cycle rather than only the follow-up queue.

4. Plutus Health

Best for: practices with a denial problem rather than a volume problem, wanting analytics and dispute capability behind the follow-up.

Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Dallas TX; three delivery centersModel: Outsourced service plus AI agentsCompliance: SOC 2 Type II

Plutus Health is the most specifically denial-oriented firm on this list. Its named services include denial management, accounts receivable management, claim submission and scrubbing, complex claims, and No Surprises Act independent dispute resolution, which is a genuinely specialist capability that most firms this size do not touch. It reports serving more than 9,000 providers across 40 or more US states, processing $1.7 billion in annual claims and $1 billion in annual collections, with 1,600 agents and 25 AI agents in production from a Dallas headquarters and three global delivery centers. It states HIPAA compliance and SOC 2 Type II, and references AAPC-certified audits against a 99.2% coding accuracy threshold.

Limitation: no pricing is published, the delivery center locations are not named, and individual coder credentials are not listed, so ask who specifically works your account.

5. Neolytix

Best for: small and mid-sized practices that want accounts receivable work from an ISO 27001 certified firm without an enterprise contract.

Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: HQ ChicagoModel: Outsourced service plus staffingCompliance: ISO 27001 certified

Neolytix is the entry that scales down, with explicit small-practice and mid-market tiers in a category where most firms chase health systems. It covers revenue cycle management including accounts receivable and denials, coding audit, credentials verification organization credentialing, provider enrollment, licensing, and virtual assistants, and reports serving more than 270 organizations across 31 specialties in 40 states from a Chicago base. It is ISO 27001 certified and states HIPAA compliance, which is a stronger documented position than most similarly sized firms manage. The mix of outsourced service and placed staffing means you can hand over the queue or take a seat, and change your mind later.

Limitation: claims follow-up is not called out as its own service line and no pricing is published, so the cost of the follow-up piece specifically takes a quote.

6. Coronis Health

Best for: behavioral health organizations and community health centers that want a billing firm familiar with their payer mix.

Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Outsourced serviceFocus: Behavioral health, CHCs, hospitals

Coronis Health names claims and accounts receivable follow-up directly alongside medical billing, coding, and revenue cycle management, and its stated client base is the reason it earns a place: behavioral health, community health centers, hospitals, health systems, and physician groups. Behavioral health and community health billing carry payer behavior that general firms handle badly, from session limits and authorization rules to grant and sliding-scale complexity, so domain familiarity is worth more here than scale.

Limitation: it publishes no pricing, no delivery location, and no named certification of any kind, which makes it the least verifiable entry on this list from public sources.

7. Waystar

Best for: organizations whose follow-up effort is misdirected rather than insufficient.

Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Software platformCompliance: HIPAA, SOC 2, HITRUST, PCI-DSS

Waystar belongs on this list because a large share of claims follow-up labor is spent on claims that a decent tool would have flagged, prioritized, or prevented. Its platform includes Claim Manager, Claim Monitoring, Denial and Appeal Management, Recoupment Manager, and Medicare Management, alongside prebill anomaly detection and charge integrity work upstream. It reports serving more than a million providers and reaching 60% of the US patient population, across physician and specialty practices, ambulatory surgery centers, billing services, laboratories, durable medical equipment, federally qualified health centers, home health and hospice, skilled nursing, and health systems. Its compliance position is the strongest here: HIPAA, SOC 2, HITRUST, and PCI-DSS.

Limitation: it is software, so your own staff still work every queue and make every payer call, which does not help a practice whose problem is that nobody is available to do it.

Should claims follow-up be staffed, outsourced, or automated?

Staff it when the backlog is a capacity problem, which it usually is. Working an aged worklist is repetitive, deadline-sensitive, and mostly about persistence rather than expertise, and hourly staff in your own system means the institutional knowledge stays with you. A medical records specialist earned about $51,140 a year, roughly $24.59 an hour before benefits, according to the u.s. bureau of labor statistics may 2025 wage data for medical records specialists, against roughly $10 to $13 an hour for placed remote staff. Outsource on a percentage of collections when your backlog is large and you would rather trade margin for certainty, since a contingent fee only costs you when it works. Outsource to an enterprise firm when accounts receivable is one symptom of upstream coding and authorization failures that need fixing together. Buy software when your team is busy but working the wrong claims, which is more common than it sounds and shows up as a high touch count per resolved claim. What none of these fix by itself is a denial pattern nobody is reading: whichever route you take, insist on denial reasons captured in a way you can aggregate. For the administrative scope you can delegate, see tasks to outsource to a virtual medical assistant.

Why are claims follow-up mistakes quiet rather than obvious?

Because a missed timely filing deadline closes a claim without anyone raising it, and the money is gone before the report shows a gap.

Timely filing deadlines. Ask who tracks them and what the escalation is at thirty days out, because a claim that ages past the deadline is simply gone.
Denial data that aggregates. Insist that denial reasons are captured in structured form. A resolved claim with no recorded reason teaches you nothing.
Write-off authority. Put in writing who can adjust or write off a balance, and at what threshold, since that authority is where losses hide.
Payer hours against delivery hours. Offshore delivery needs shifts overlapping US payer business hours. Confirm the schedule, not the headcount.
Compliance evidence. Certifications vary widely here, from HITRUST and SOC 2 down to none at all. Get the Business Associate Agreement before access is granted.

How is claims follow-up priced?

Three shapes, two of them published. Percentage of collections: Transcure publishes 3% to 5% of monthly collections, which is the contingent model and the one that aligns incentives on aged claims. Hourly: Honest Taskers publishes $10.00 to $12.65 depending on role, background, schedule, and location. AGS Health, Plutus Health, Neolytix, and Coronis Health are quote-only, and outsourced accounts receivable work in this market is commonly priced either as a percentage of collections or per resolved claim, though none of them publishes a figure. Waystar licenses software with no published price. The comparison unit that works is cost per dollar recovered on your own aged buckets, which you can calculate for the hourly option from touches per hour and resolution rate, and which any contingent provider should be willing to model with you. Rates were checked August 2026 and change often. For staffing rate context, see how much a virtual medical assistant costs in 2026.

Does the claims follow-up partner get paid in a way that matches your backlog?

Check the incentive first, then deadline discipline, denial reporting and coverage hours.

Incentive that matches your backlog. Contingent pricing suits an aged backlog; a flat seat suits steady current volume.
A timely filing report. Ask to see it before signing, showing claims by days to deadline.
Structured denial capture. Require denial reason codes in a report you can aggregate and act on.
Coverage during payer hours. Get the shift pattern in writing, and more so for offshore delivery.
Named security standard. ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, or HITRUST. Several firms here name none.

What shape is your accounts receivable backlog before you hand it over?

Age it properly first, because the shape of it decides which model to buy.

Pull your accounts receivable by bucket and by payer, and flag everything within sixty days of timely filing.
If the backlog is large and old, price a contingent arrangement against it.
If current volume is the problem, buy a seat and give it the worklist plus a daily touch target.
Get the Business Associate Agreement, scoped system access, and a written write-off threshold before go-live.
Re-age the backlog after ninety days and measure recovery against your own baseline, not the vendor report.

For the hiring route on the staffing option, read how to hire a virtual medical assistant.

Methodology and sources

We read each company's own website in August 2026, recording which claims follow-up work is performed, what credentials or certifications are stated, published pricing, purchase model, and named compliance. Wage context is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for medical records specialists. Claims submission and timely filing rules are set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for Medicare and by contract for commercial payers. Where a company didn't publish a fact, we marked it "not publicly listed"; accuracy, volume and collection figures are labeled company-reported and were not independently audited.

If the backlog is a capacity problem, the fastest fix is a named owner with a daily touch target. Our explainer on what a virtual medical assistant is covers what a remote hire can own in a billing queue, and where the boundary sits before work needs a coding credential.

Speak with Honest Taskers about staffing your claims follow-up.

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