Welcome to the board Julianne!
You are taking on a big project, so good for you. I am very glad "we" did it 13 years ago, but I wouldn't personally try to do it now if I wasn't still happily married. My secret was to have a spouse that made it work then, and keeps it working now.
You are starting a profit center in your business, hopefully the most profitable one you will ever have. It will be worth it if you have the time to make it run right. If you don't have the help I've had, you have to consider if the hope of profit and risk of losing money is worth your time and stress. Consider overlapping both inhouse and outsourced billing with a gradual transition so you don't have to start in the fast lane.
First of all, you need to be or become knowledgeable on this stuff:
http://www.westtnmedicalnews.com/medical-practice-embezzlement-an-ounce-of-prevention-cms-1342http://www.kareo.com/gettingpaid/20...d-embezzlement-in-your-medical-practice/http://www.amazon.com/How-Steal-Medical-Practice-prevent/dp/1456593625You will need to find a clearinghouse, so include that in your research. Batch eligibility is worth it.
Is your computer IT adequate for this? Lot's of them have some experience with some of the PMs, so you might benefit from a switch to a different tech shop. Reliability
If you hire an experienced biller, it won't take long to transition. You might consider choosing your practice management software based on what the biller is used to working with, if it isn't too expensive to hire the biller first.
If you have to train a biller, know that it is only hard if they have to do the coding, which you can do easily. Probably you already do the coding. Anyway, some degree of "analness" and a willingness to get on the phone and hunt down the solution is all they need, as the billing community will train them if they have some humility. Don't hire a biller that never wants to get on the phone to get to the bottom of problems. It is very easy for them to just send out another bad claim.
MEDfx is the chosen PM that will be integrated into AC by next summer. You could start using it now, but I can't find anything about it beyond the website,
http://www.medfx.com/ There are no videos on youtube explaining it, no testimonials, and noone on this board or anywhere on the web that I've searched has anything to say about it. It's a big unknown that has had a program from a company that is a few miles from AC. AC has chosen it, so it might be worth waiting for it.
Hopefully, AC will give an update and start giving us more reasons to consider MEDfx, more information and a reason to want to make that leap.
I am personally researching a switch from MediSoft to TotalMD now, as I am hesitant to jump to MEDfx until I can get some confidence in it.
The transition you want to make is doable, but big. Go for it, but try to have everything running well by next June so that you are ready for ICD-10 in October.
