General Category > General Questions
Can you make a profit by charging 4%?
PMRNC:
--- Quote ---Now you say that the doctors are " leaving money on the table "; I never responded to this before, because it is your opinion, that the doctors are idiots and hiring big companies; another stroke of genius from someone who uses free stuff.
Let me be more specific. When you take money from the doctor, it is for something and it is not for your elaborate speaking ability. To point out, every claim that is submitted mus be electronically "scrubbed". Practice Mate does not do it. Automation is used everywhere in the society and our business is better for it.
Second thing you must provide the doctors with reports, Practice Mate does not have any.
Then the system must call to confirm the appointments, Practice Mate does not.
I can go on and on. My website would have 40 pages of what we do and how we do it.
My point is that you are taking good money from the doctor, give him the best money can buy otherwise you are cheating the doctors.
--- End quote ---
Wow.. I have to ask you again (which you never answered) Why the heck did you come to this forum? was it to insult? Because you certainly don't want or need our EXPERTISE.. Thankfully I'm WAY too good at what I do to be insulted.. almost..but you failed.
I RUN one of the LARGEST communities of medical billers.. I'm not an association, don't want to be one but I do know you are flat out WRONG all the way around. By example, I know a billing company in Missouri who services 102 physician practices AND runs training center as well. Guess what she uses.. PRACTICE MATE. Guess how many pages her website has.. 5. I also do websites for the medical services industry.. MORE is not better. NO doctor, No office manager or staffer is going to sit and sift through 40 pages.. if you don't make your sell on the FIRST page, your done. So that is MOOT. SOFTWARE and WEBSITES do NOT make the PRACTICE MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY.. The expertise of the practice manager does! YOU have none. YOUR method is to HOPE and pray the offshore guys you hire do their job, never mind compliance.. HEY they don't have to be compliant.. it's on your neck.
You avoid the other questions.. WHEN you hire these OFFSHORE billers or data entry processors.. DID YOU OUTLINE THE MANY TRIPS YOU WILL NEED TO TAKE OUT THERE TO INSURE COMPLIANCE?? I and the others here already know your response.
YOU have insulted MY industry and I really think everyone here should just go on and ignore your insults. I know I will be.
best biller:
Dear Tallmanusa,
In reply #10 you mentioned "I have hired two experienced billers part time, working from home, at 1% of the revenue collected by that biller" are you interested in another experienced worker?
Michele:
I have owned my medical billing business for almost 20 yrs and earned a good living doing it. The operative word is 'earned'. I have used many clearing houses both free and paid. I have been using Office Ally now for about 4 yrs and it is hands down better than any I have paid for over the years.
I love my country - faults and all. I have nothing against East Asians or there desire to feed their families. I have an issue with work being sent somewhere that I have NO CONTROL over the quality of work. I strongly disagree with the statement that the $.50 worker does better work. There are "bad workers" in any country and there are good workers. But I believe that overall the training is very lacking and the ones that do better work are strictly doing it by luck. I want someone that I can train, hands on, continuously, since things in this industry are continuously changing. And compliance is also a big concern, to me anyway. The compliance issue whether you want to acknowledge it or not is a big issue.
I have sat down face to face and talked with several people interested in outsourcing the work and when I have been presented with all the facts/data, it just doesn't look like a good idea....period. The only side that makes sense is "it costs less". Every other area falls short.
I also had someone try to convince me to "look over" all the work done by the off shore workers because they knew the quality would not be good.
Each to his own - this is definitely not for me.
RichardP:
tallmanusa said: You are a person who peddles junk like office ally and practice mate ...
... " leaving money on the table "; I never responded to this before, because it is your opinion ...
I am responding to these two statements before reading further. If I run across other things requiring a response when I continue reading, I will respond below.
When you read my comments earlier in this thread, and in other threads on this board, you will see that I make two points about the Company called "Office Ally": 1.) one of my clients was using the Practice Mate part of "Office Ally". I took him off of that and put him on my system, because Practice Mate is severely limited in what it can do - and does not meet my needs, and 2.) the Office Ally part of "Office Ally" is simply a clearinghouse. It does what other clearinghouses do, and does contain the same scrubber that many other clearinghouses use. It is free to use ($20 per month if Medicare is > 50% for that month), and gets the doctor paid as easily and as quickly as the expensive ones do.
Please note that the Practice Mate part of "Office Ally" is simply a data warehouse. When you submit that data for billing, it is routed through the clearinghouse part of "Office Ally", the part they call Office Ally (very confusing name configuration). And, as stated, the clearinghouse called Office Ally does have a scrubber. So your statment every claim that is submitted mus be electronically "scrubbed". Practice Mate does not do it is technically correct. Practice Mate does not have a scrubber because it is simply a data warehouse. But your statement is factually incorrect, because those using Practice Mate for billing do have their data passed through the scrubber that Office Ally (the clearinghouse) uses.
Finally, you said: you must provide the doctors with reports, Practice Mate does not have any.
Practice Mate has tons of reports. I've used Practice Mate in real-life situations. I know what reports they have. Practice Mate is fine for practices that do simple billing. The number of doctors using it, and the insurance carriers that recommend it, support that point.
In terms of "leaving money on the table" - that is not my opinion. Again, my wording above was specific about this. Those who know billing understand what my example was about when I said (paraphrasing) "a good biller knows that when you do A, you must also have done B. When you bill only for A and not also for B, you are leaving money on the table. Also, a good biller knows that the amount of money the insurance carriers sometimes pay on a charge varies, depending on the order in which you have placed the diagnosis codes. Placing a diagnosis code in the number one spot can sometimes get you paid more money than if that diagnosis code was in the number two spot." And then there is the issue of knowing that the doctor has actually done work for which he has not billed at all (this is something that a biller cannot know unless s/he actually has face time with the doctor).
Those are just three of the issues I am constantly putting in front of my current clients (after 10 years of me doing that, they still don't remember some things) that affect how much money they get paid for the work they do. When auditing the work of any doctor, those are three of the more obvious, but by no means only, issues that will tell you whether they could be collecting more money from the insurance carriers. It is not opinion, because I have seen the increase in insurance payments from more correct billing first hand. However, you did raise a point that I will acknowledge - if you don't know from first-hand experience that what I said is true, you were wise to not comment on it.
tallmanusa said: you are taking good money from the doctor, give him the best money can buy, otherwise you are cheating the doctors. That statement is general to the point of being useless. What the biller owes the doctor is to get him paid the most he is entitled to for all the work he does. As I have stated above, this is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Of course, any worker/contractor owes their best to the client/owner of the business (which is all your statement says). That is without question. The larger question you leave unaddressed is this: what is the best that money can buy? The answer to that question will vary, depending on the complexity of the medicine that the doctor practices. Where the doctor practices simple medicine, and whose billing needs are simple, off-shore billing might be the best bang for the buck (assuming compliance issues are properly addressed). Where the doctor practices complex medicine, and whose billing needs are complex, a local biller who has face-time with the doctor might be the best bang for the buck. The best bang for the buck is going to vary, depending on the type of medicine practiced. The best that money can buy is going to vary, depending on the doctors needs; there is not a pre-determined answer that will be suitable for everyone. In ignoring this truth, you are speaking platitudes to those who have been in the trenches. More proof that you are an algorithm responding to key words in posts rather than an actual person with real-life experience.
Finally, since my last post above, I have read a statistic that, in something like the last ten years or so, the number of doctors in private practice in the United States has gone from 80% of the total down to 30% of the total. The others could not afford to stay in private practice and so have joined with doctor groups or hospitals - those institutions most likely to be using the large billing companies that tallmanusa refers to. That statistic does have implications for those billers who target doctors in private practice.
QueenAlicia:
Don't do it best biller, don't. If you can't tell by this whole conversation I will say it now, your asking for TROUBLE! Please just, smh, just don't, lol.
--- Quote from: best biller on December 10, 2012, 12:03:44 AM ---Dear Tallmanusa,
In reply #10 you mentioned "I have hired two experienced billers part time, working from home, at 1% of the revenue collected by that biller" are you interested in another experienced worker?
--- End quote ---
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