Starting a Medical Billing Business > Starting Your Own Medical Billing Business

Any billers here in the Seattle area??

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williamportor:
Hello,

I've just been fired by my biggest client after 3 weeks. This doesn't happen very often, but feel if I could watch a professional billing company do their job for a few hours, and be able to ask questions, I could become a better and more efficient biller. I do billing for 8 other clients, though smaller, they are all happy with my work. Every time I land a larger one however, I can't seem to live up to their expectations.

Unlike many of you I had little experience with Medical Billing when I started in this business 4 years ago, but feel I've gotten much better. I don't yet have the $$ to travel to the east coast, but if there are any of you in the Seattle area that would allow me to drop by to watch, that would be very much appreciated. It's tough to grow ones business when this happens.

kristin:
Wish I was in Seattle, that is my favorite city!

Let me ask you this...is the issue that there just isn't enough hours in the week to keep up when you do land a larger client, and you are still working all the smaller accounts too? Meaning, is there just not enough "you" to go around? If so, have you thought of sub-contracting out some of the smaller clients to someone, or adding an employee to help? I get the feeling you aren't the issue/your skill set, so much as it is a time factor.

One of the billing companies I work for has always had one huge client, and two smaller ones. I have been the only employee, and I handle one of the smaller accounts exclusively. If I was to quit, the owner would have to hire someone else, because it is simply too much work for one person to do on their own. And that is only one huge account and two smaller ones, not eight smaller ones.

Michele:
So sorry to hear.  That is a tough one to overcome.  We once lost a very large client VERY unexpectedly and it was a huge blow!  We too had many small and medium clients and this was our first big account.  We worked for them for over a year and did a REALLY GOOD job.  We over doubled their monthly revenue without them seeing any more patients.  That's how bad their billing was before we took over.  One day I walked in and the doctor wouldn't look me in the eye.  He said "I need to talk to you".  I was FLOORED!  But on the same note, not surprised.  The doctor's wife was also a doctor and she never liked us.  He brought us in behind her back.  And she wore the pants!  So even though we did a great job and their income was good, their patient billing was going out regular for the first time EVER and the aging report was being worked, we got fired.  Linda always says if the doctor's wife is involved, RUN!  We actually have other accounts where the doctors wife is involved and it's fine, but in this case we should have known.  Anyways back to Williamsportor, I know it's a tough blow, but learn from it.  Turn it around to make it a good thing.  If you learn the lesson that you need to learn so that the next account doesn't fire you then it will have been worth it.  Look back over the time you had the account.  What condition was it in when you took over?  Did you improve it?  What more could you have done?  What (if anything) did you do wrong?

Kristin pointed out some good things.  Did you have enough time to devote to it?  Do you know what their issues were (why they hired you) and did you make them better?

Even though you started with not much experience you have been doing this long enough that you should be confident in yourself now.  Sometimes when we lose accounts it is not our fault.  In our example above, we truly did nothing wrong (work wise) on the account.  We cleaned it up and got money coming in the way it should have been.  But we still lost the account.  And the person they replaced us with had a 40% drop the first month she took over.  They have lost money due to switching from us, but it didn't stop them.  Why? Because the reason they didn't want us in there was not because we weren't doing a good job, it was because the wife and office manager (Separate people) did not like us.  They were friends and we exposed how poorly of a job the office manager was doing.  (She still works there.  :) )  The lessen we learned was that some accounts are not right to take, no matter how much money they bring in.  And also, it does not ever pay to go around the office manager.  She will find a way to get you out.  I'm not going to publicly make accusations against her so I will just say that she should have been more than fired for the things that she did and didn't do.  But she wasn't, we were.   We had another account years later that was even larger.  After our 1 year contract was up we informed them we would not be renewing.  Some accounts are truly not worth it.  (Dr's wife was the office manager!)

I wish we were closer too!  I don't foresee a trip to the west coast but you never know!  I have never seen Seattle.  If we are heading that way we will let you know!

Michele:
OH, and 3 weeks?  Seriously?  No one could know if you were doing a good job in 3 weeks.  What did they tell you as a reason?

williamportor:
Thank You everyone for the input. My 8 other clients (mostly Optical and Chiropractic) take about 100 / mo hours to service and bring in about $1350.00 / mo. Not a great return for my time, but it's steady. Whenever I land a larger client I have to spend at least 30-40 hrs. a week cleaning up their billing mess (not unusual when a provider switches billers) This means I spend 50-60 hrs a week working, and can't really do a good job on anything. I can get the larger clients problems fixed, but I can't get them fixed FAST ENOUGH to suit them.

I contacted several billing companies in my area, and asked to see how they do things, and they politely told me to "get lost" I'm not sure if I'm under charging my customers, or I'm just inefficient (maybe both) Please don't get me wrong, I do love this lifestyle, but $1350.00 / mo. doesn't buy much, and I'd like to move ahead. I'm still trying to figure out how a biller can produce $5000.00 - $7000.00 of billing fees, when I struggle to do over $2000.00

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