This is a great first client, If it were me I'd ditch the whole IC thing as it's a tax headache for both of you and work as a business owner so that you can establish your business right. Just my 2 cents.
I wanted to start my own medical billing business yeaaaars ago. I bought the books from this site and everything. After a few more years experience and frustration from working underneath people, I decided to advertise my services as an independent contractor. I figured I would get my company name out there and network through part time freelance work. Long story short, I sent my resume and cover letter to someone looking for a part time biller. I went in for an interview with him today. I really didn't know the details of what he wanted me to do, but it just sounded like part time billing from home and going in the office a couple days a week. Ends up he was impressed by my experience enough that he felt I could possibly do the entire revenue cycle. Actually, after seeing how mixed up he was, I kind of suggested it. Plus, the little voice in my head was yelling at me to take this on. But I am not prepared for this, not really. I've done my time in medical billing and wanted to concentrate on consulting. But here's the situation at hand: He has 8 doctors (soon to be 10). His docs are designated physicians for workers comp cases, therefore he is legally owed the money for his services. His problem is that he doesn't have time to collect and see what's going on. He didn't know what a PM system was, EMR, or anything. He couldn't exactly tell me how much his practice makes monthly (he kind of just threw out $50,000 at me). He didn't really know what a clearinghouse was. He has a clearinghouse now but it's RIDICULOUSLY INEFFICIENT. With all this information, it was difficult to hide my shock. But he wants to hire me on as a contractor. I told him I would accept 10% of collections, claim submission and tracking would be a different fee, as will be monthly reporting. I have a feeling I will be downloading Office Ally in place of whatever he has now. He just needs someone with some sort of "know how" around insurance. It all sounds like a slam dunk, but omg.... Are there any suggestions on how to price monthly reporting and calculating consult fees? Monthly reporting is more accounting work than showing my work for the past month. The fact that he really doesn't know how much he was bringing in monthly and that he doesn't know how to use excel is insane to me... and I can't work with that. We'll see how that all pans out but I would appreciate any advice or similar experiences. I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew, and I have a feeling that's what I may be getting myself into. Being that I wasn't prepared for something like this, I am a little gun shy of spending a ton of cash. But if I wanted to take the data from their system (which seems like some makeshift customized program in outlook) how would I transfer that to a software like totalmd? How does the transfer from PM systems usually happen? I don't want to do this too quickly because I don't want to scare them off with a ton of new changes when I'm not even in the door yet
I would add that it might make your job easier if you could obtain permission to work in their office for awhile, where you have access to all their records, until such a time as you have the data entry finished, and you've been able to gather the information you need to do your job in an organized manner.