Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Billing

Billing is the lifeblood of any office...including my new practice. And while I thought I had done a decent job of due diligence prior to siging up with a billing company, I have to say that "stuff happens" (or not in this case) and I'm not even close to being pleased.

So the search is on.

I spoke yesterday morning at length with the folks at OfficeAlly. I've had several local offices recommend them. One of the perks is that it's a free service to offices (unless greater than 50% of your billing is medicare/medicaid...then you pay a flat rate of $19.95/month). They tell me they work with most billing software (ie, you can just export your data to them).

My question is, has anyone used them? Can you just export your data using the "export billing" function of AC?

Thanks,

Barbara C. Phillips, NP
Aberdeen Primary Care

I have recently signed up with http://mtbc.com/ and I am very happy. I can export my superbills directly to the MTBC by clicking Pull Superbills-Export. You can't just export your data using the "export billing" unless the billing company has an arragements with Amazing Charts. I had to call Amazing Charts office to notify about my agreement with MTBC. Amazing Charts IT support configured my Amazing Charts to bill uplod superbills directly to MTBC.

Very happy with them. Been using them for over one year. I still cannot beleive that they are free.

OfficeAlly is not a billing company, it's a clearing house. It means you would need to buy additional billing software in order to export superbills electronically from Amazing Charts to OfficeAlly, unless you want to do it manually which would be too time consuming. We have similar free clearing house in Texas called THIN.

Roy,

Since they are just a free clearinghouse, you must have some expense.....right?

How do you submit your data to them? What about invoicing patients? A/R tracking?

I use a 1996 version of Medisoft and upload HCFA form info in textfomat. Office Ally does the rest. We get paper EOB and insert the info to Medisoft. I understand that AC can sent HCFA1500 formatted textfile directly to OfficeAlly but have not tried to do this yet.

OFFICE ALLY has been great. The only problem is, in it's present state, A/C Cant upload claims directly in batch- Claims are uploaded manually 1 by 1. Jon is working on making the necessary changes (Hopefully as we speak).
If one plans to bill insurance traditionally they would still probably need to purchase a billing software package to track all the back and forth- patient payments, denials, downcoading etc. But, Affice Ally plans to offer a FREE online Practice Management compnent (modeled after LYCOS) soon. How soon, I dont know :!:

HOWEVER... We are starting a cash practice from scratch and will attempt to survive w/out getting caught up with insurance billing. We do offer to "SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY" for the patient which speeds up their reimbursement and simplifies things for them. (So far as little as 7 days with some payers)

I agree that they have been great thus far and we are only getting started. I have to admit...I love that I can pick up the phone and call and someone answers. And when something needs to be looked at, they actually call me back - it's a real treat.

IMADO, when you are uploading your files one by one, how are you doing that? Seems I cannot export to office ally as they have a problem with that sting of text in 33 box.

I spoke with our local blue cross carrier today and they told me the only way they can receive from Office Ally is to manually type the claim into the online form. I'm wondering if that is the way I will have to go for all the them at this point (unless I want to get a third party involved like EZ Claims).

Barbara

I use the "Online Claim" tool. Enter one patient claim and it saves all the demographics and ins. info for next time. If you have back logged claims its really tedious to catch up because you have to enter everyones demographics separately. However once they are loaded you you just pull up thier name and enter the codes and your done.


Not my experience- I used the free trial of Ezclaim and it worked to upload in batch. It fixes the LINE 33 issue so Office Ally will take it. And All of the claims to ALL of the Blues were processed.
They (Office Ally) plan to release an online practice management suite at no charge, soon- How soon? They cant say for sure but "1-2 months- Maybe".
Check out my somewhat rambling post in the Problem forum... I spiral in to much more depth there..

OFFICE ALLY export format added in BETA on 01/19/2007. YES- Its here! At least in beta. Here's the link
http://www.amazingcharts.com/beta/

I would like to ask those using a billing company (particilarly mtbc.com):

Do you adjust payments in Amazing Charts superbills after you receive EOBs, or you just track them on your billing company website?

We have tried entering all payments/adjustments to Amazing Charts superbills, but it is time consuming and not accurate, because we don't create electronic superbills for hospital visits.

Apricot,
We reconcile EOBs (we use MTBC) with the billing we generate from Amazing Charts. We use amazing Charts for all our billing (except for record request fees, or no show fees which we don't send to MTBC either). I had a discussion with my administrator as to why we continue to do this as it really seems like wasted effort. In over two year we have not found a discrepancy. It is like keeping track of your checks in the paper ledger and also on quickbooks and your online bank. "It's always been done this way" is not a great argument. I'm currently inclined to not keep updating EOBs back in AC - EXCEPT that when a patient asks for balance an payment info it is a delay to log on and get the info on the web when it could be a few mouseclicks away on AC. Now if only we had an import - export feature between AC and MTBC that could keep it current all the time with little user input.....