Re: Billing company rates / percentages

[Guest guest]

Don’t rule out Practice Partner. In my opinion much

better than NextGen and I thought about the same price as e-MDs. Also

e-clinical gets a lot of good reviews for a “all-in-one” program

(integrated EMR and Practice Management)

Kathy Saradarian, MD

Branchville, NJ

www.qualityfamilypractice.com

Solo 4/03, Practicing since 9/90

Practice Partner 5/03

Low staffing

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of Pratt

Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 7:54 PM

To:

Subject: RE: Re: Billing company rates /

percentages

That was

our experience when we went with e-MDs over 3 years ago. The next best

bet was NextGen, at about 4 times the price.

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C.

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of np92801

Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 12:47 AM

To:

Subject: Re: Billing company rates / percentages

It seems E-mds is the cheapest Do-it-all solution which eliminates

duplicate entry of diagnosis and ICD-9. Am I wrong? The billing

company seems to add yet another player in this crowded billing game.

>

> The thing to look at specifically, in my opinion, is whether there

is integration int he software. By that, I mean, when you enter the

data in the chart it is captured by the billing module. Also in the

billing module is there a way to track payments, statements,

guarantors, etc? eMD's does all of this and allows us to do all of

our billing and collections without paying anyone. We keep the

revenue. Don't forget transaction cost-everytime you have to enter

data, track data or otherwise handle a piece of information there is

cost-measured in time. If you have to enter it twice, it costs you

both times.

> The only thing we have in our profession is time, that is what we

work off of, no real product to sell. So if you have a nonintegrated

program, where you need to reenter data from one program to another,

or deal with kind of stuff, you will either need to pay someone to

reenter data (employees or billing agent), limit patient time to do

it yourself, or spend more time working and less time with your

family. The one thing computers can do for us, besides the charting

is streamline these functions and you keep the money in your pocket.

The cost of the product is peanuts compared to the cost of hiring

employees or billing agents. Besides, you can depreciate the software

and hardware to keep your taxes lower, something you can't do with

employees.

>

> ________________________________

>

> From:

on behalf of Wellington

and

> Sent: Thu 10/9/2008 3:57 PM

> To:

> Subject: Re: Billing company rates /

percentages

>

>

>

> It seems that alot of the EMR's make it easy to do billing as the

billing and charge component are built in to the EMR. I guess I need

to dig a little deeper into what the EMR is capable of.

>

> Wellingtom

>

>

> Billing company rates /

percentages

>

>

>

> I am trying to figure out what rate or percentage billing

companies are

> getting these days. I have never done this, so I am clueless.

I

> interviewed my first billing company today and they want 10%

of

> collections. I thought this was high, but they are doing it

all. They

> do all the billing, deal with the insurance companies on

claims and

> denials, send pt statements, and deal with pts on their

bills. If i go

> with them, I do not need any billing software in my EMR,

which would

> save me a few dollars. After looking at that and not having

to pay for

> an extra employess and benefits, I thought this might not be

so bad

> after all. Am I thinking wrong? I know there can be some

negotiation on

> the percentage.

> Thanks for the help.

>

> Wellington

>

[Guest guest]

My experience in starting from scratch never having done this stuff:

As long as you pay attention to the information coming back, you WILL

get paid. It just takes time to track down each issue and jump through

the correct hoop. If you know the basic CPT E & M coding, you could

gather a list here of the common gotchas to avoid, and that would

cover 85% of the issues. The other 15% are insurance-specific, or are

specific to your software, or are something that changes without your

knowing it, and these just have to be bird-dogged (as we say where I

come from).

Haresch

>

> I really am not turned off by the business side of the practice. I

am just a little apprehensive of doing my own billing and not getting

paid because of my own ignorance. Like not having the right modifier.

Should my billing software take care of that problem? If so, then this

would not be so bad.

>

> Wellington