Medical Billing Forum
Starting a Medical Billing Business => Starting Your Own Medical Billing Business => : jyoung65 March 30, 2011, 02:02:27 PM
-
I am sick right about now! I have a client I charged 40% for her aged claims. She had claims over 120 days old. I asked for advise from the forum and I was told to charge her 50, 40 and 35%.
So I charged her 40%, my competitors are charging 41/2, 5 and 10% for aged claims. I need and want to be competitive, but their rates are very low, aged claims are very time consuming. I need some advise please.
Thanks
-
what does your contract say?
-
I am not referring to my current contract. This is for future clients pricing.
-
Don't worry about your competition. You want to be light years ahead of the competition by offering better service than they are. When you are charging 40% on these older claims they are taking you much more work and you are getting paid for your time. Someone who is charging only 5% is not getting paid for their time or they are not spending enough time to do a good job. How can you compare yourself to them. It is sometimes difficult in the beginning of this business to justify what you charge compared to others but you shouldn't care what others charge. Are they doing the same job you are doing? You are getting 40% for the ones you are working on and getting paid for your time. You have a chance of surviving. How long can someone suvive if they aren't getting paid enough for their time or are doing a poor job of it?
-
Another way is to charge by the time, or a flat fee. It always sounds high when you say 40% or even 35%. Truth is collection agencies get about that % too and this is truly collection work.
I don't know how anyone can do aged claims for 4.5% or 5%. But 4.5% of nothing is nothing and that means the 95.5% that the provider kept is $0 too. They may not want to pay you 40%, but 60% of something is better than 95.5% of nothing.
-
Another way is to charge by the time, or a flat fee. It always sounds high when you say 40% or even 35%. Truth is collection agencies get about that % too and this is truly collection work.
I don't know how anyone can do aged claims for 4.5% or 5%. But 4.5% of nothing is nothing and that means the 95.5% that the provider kept is $0 too. They may not want to pay you 40%, but 60% of something is better than 95.5% of nothing.
Brilliant verbage! And if the claim was easy to collect, why wasn't it collected to begin with? You're going to have to figure out what went wrong and that takes time! You need to be paid for your time!
-
Great advice, I am working on my price list now ( I won't share this with the provider). This is great information know for future clients.
-
Here is the problem with charging a percentage of revenue..
1. In order for it to be appealing you need to be priced LOWER than a collection agency which also goes further in collections than you will. Collection agencies will charge 40-70% sometimes..so you have to come in lower!
2. You will NEVER get paid for the work you do on those accounts by charging a %.
3. Then there's the fee-splitting issue. nuff said there.
-
"nuff" i love it
-
"nuff" i love it
What that's not a word?? LOL JK :) I think it comes from texting with my teenage daughters, I got all the short lingo down :)
-
its funny to me because I used to say enuff to my kids and spell it out e n u f f - linda you are hilarious.
-
its funny to me because I used to say enuff to my kids and spell it out e n u f f - linda you are hilarious.
:) got to have a sense of humor in this business.
On a side note.. I notice "collections" was mentioned.. make sure you are following the collection laws for both your state and FDCPA. for example, in some states you MUST put the mini miranda on all statements beyond 30 days. There are state and federal regs you have to follow.. EVEN if your not actually collecting the money and instead just "acting" as a collection service. Just thought I'd throw that out there :)