How Long Do Paralegals Spend on Hold with Medical Billing Departments?

The numbers

Paralegals at high-volume PI firms routinely report 30 to 60 minutes or more on hold per verification call when contacting hospital billing, payer eligibility lines, and lien holders. Multiplied across dozens of cases and multiple providers per case, hold time alone can consume many hours per week per paralegal.

Impact on cases

That time is not billable in the traditional sense — it is absorbed as overhead. When hold times spike during peak hours or after system outages, backlogs grow and settlement timelines slip. Firms that track hold time often find it is one of the largest hidden costs in their verification workflow.

Reducing hold time

Some offices try to mitigate by calling early in the morning or using dedicated lines, but provider phone systems vary widely. There is no single trick that eliminates hold time across the board; the only reliable approach is to either dedicate staff specifically to waiting or to offload the hold to technology that can wait indefinitely without costing billable labor.

Automated voice agents that stay on hold until a human answers can turn paralegal hours back into productive work while still capturing the verified balance. The ROI for firms with heavy verification volume is often measurable within the first few months.