Home Forums Discussions General Discussion changing office locations

i may be changing office locations due to the high cost of rent. How do I go about changing things with the insurance? What about medicare? I know I would have to send letters to all of my patients. Has anyone gone through this process? What was the timeline with the move etc? If I do go through with the move, I want to be prepared and want to try and make things as seemless as possible.

sFernandez, I am going thru the "credentialing" process. If you are simply changing your Address that is a fairly straight process or notifying the Insurance companies of your change of address. If you are going to be operating under a new Tax ID it's a "re-credentialing," and most of them advise 60 days!

sFernandez,whatever you do, notify Medicare of the date that you are moving as soon as possible. When I moved my office two years ago, it took Medicare *nine months* to acknowledge my existance and resume paying me! Even with a certified delivery letter, it took 7 weeks from the time the change of address was mailed to them for the request to come to the attention of one of their minions, and another 7 and a half months to recieve payment. It's totally outrageous. Consider going non-par and collecting from the patients, unless your cash flow from other payers is adequate to withstand prolonged bureaucratic delay.

Look, lets just be straight-forward about this. Unless your practice is in an area dwhere you NEED (not Want) the Medicare patients to be profitable, you should be non-par. Really. As bad as the insurance companies are, the Gov't is worse. Big-time.

Those feelings you have about "giving back to the community". You really have to hold them back. Once you are comfortably profitable,you can think about it.

Wow it is an eye opener to listen to folks from other parts of the country. In my neighborhood, Medicare is the good stuff! And Medi-medi is like a gold card.

Ditto here, Martin. Other than the 3 months it took for Medicare to pay me after I made my office move last year, I would much rather deal with them than with the "commercials".

Leslie

Yes, Martin, I guess you are right about that. It is an eye-opener. But I think that I had read someplace that in a couple of states 1 insurance company (BCBS maybe) gained an overwhelming marketshare and dropped their reimbursements to 90% or Medicare. I just didn't know which states.

Can anyone here say.... "CARTEL!!!"?????