Home Forums Discussions Coding and Billing Billing Company feedback

I am planning on switching from my present outsourced billing company to one of the four billing companies presently recommended by Amazing Charts, which include Cascade Billing and New York Med Billing. Does anyone have any experience with any of these companies?

I'm in the process of getting information about these companies as well, as we are in the same situation. Does no other practice here use any of these companies?

If all you want is a billing company, Office Ally does a fine job (I am a recent convert). If you want a Practice Management Company, that is a horse of a different color...they are not one and the same.

Best thing I ever did for my bottom line was start managing my own billing. 18 years in practice and I have been through three different billing companies - each time had the same experience. Things started out well but then billing started to get sloppy. Eventually patient were mad, I was mad, and accounts receivable was a mess. It seems like the billing companies are competent and willing to collect that first 90% that is easy to collect. The 10% that actually requires some work gets put on the back burner - 10% uncollected over years ends up adding up to a lot.

Last year I decided to bring it in house. I think it is easier to do your own billing now than it used to be. Between Office Ally which makes submitting bills easy, and Google Search which allows you to find out the answer to just about any billing question in a few moments, things are way better now. Granted, you have to have someone reliable on your staff to do the data entry and lick a few envelopes, but I am much happier now, so are my patients, and so is my bank account.

Good luck!

For in office billing you will want to have an experienced person, but over all we are much more satisfied in the 15+ yrs since we stopped outsourcing. Mike's comments are correct. Having said that, our area there are PCPS using a revenue management company, which is not strictly a billing service (e.g. Office does a little more data entry up front) but apparently does increase collections by going after every $ and preventing down coding prior to actual claims submission. Same % as plain billing companies. Based in Boston and starts with an "A"

Thanks for the feedback, I'm currently looking at Cascade since they are competitively priced, experienced with AC, and appear to do exactly what we need regarding reporting, re submissions, and scrubbing. We do not have an experienced biller on hand, and we are noticing far too many oversights and shortcomings with the currently outsourced arrangement.

Leslie-

This solution will likely be just for billing until a stable V7 shows up. It could work for us beyond that should it compliment a PM-enhanced AC. Our busiest time of the year (back to school) is around the corner and we're completely unsatisfied with our current biller. Do you have a staff member dedicated to working with Office Ally? How is the workflow/support?

I would recommend to use an outside company to print , mail your statments. This will save a lot of time for your employee. They can also, track patient address if they move.

I and my two staffers share the billing duties. I know how to do it all if one is off. I lost my full-time biller this past March and the economy right now is not conducive to replacing her. My PM program (which I have used and supported since 1997) wants $7000 to link me up to a free clearinghouse that can send Medicare claims (which I previously did through the program via modem). I cannot afford that. So, I looked into OA and find it to meet my current needs. I have been beta testing V7 and, for now, it uses a fee-for-service clearinghouse and the upload of HCFAs is not yet up to par (IMO). So, for now, I am triple entering because I am hoping AC will eventually meet my needs. I am still posting to the old PM program.

But, at least I can send my claims electronically and OA does scrub the claims nicely. Not the ideal set-up for sure but, for now, it will suffice....and it is free. I was able to import patient data into OA from AC fairly painlessly although I did need OA tech support which I have found to be very good.

If starting from scratch, the PM function of OA (called Practice Mate)may well meet your needs. But, with 26 years of billing data, I find I needed something a little more robust.

I know AC has the potential and the drive to make a good PM (we have seen it in their EHR) but they are not there yet.

Leslie, when I last spoke to OA about it (granted, it was at least one year ago, maybe 2) there was no way to import AC data into practice mate. Apparently, you can now. It may be a good PM solution for me.

It did a pretty good job, Wayne, and they were impressed at how AC had their data laid.

So as it turns out OA is not accepting new clients currently while they restructure their products/services.

Hmmm, guess I got in just in time.

Leslie, I was just logged into Practice Mate and I saw no way to import patient demographics. Was this something that OA had to do for you?

leslie, I found it. This definitely was not there a year or 2 ago! Wish I'd know about this, I would have probably gone ahead and tried out PracticeMate then.

Has PracticeMate been working out OK? We use OA for our clearinghouse already since its such an easy upload from AC.

Well, I am not using Practice Mate as a PM at this time. But I log onto it and use it as my clearinghouse. I think Practice Mate might be a good option for those small practices just starting out but, since I have no real experience with it, that is speculation. I know they will give you a personal tutorial on the accounting part of the program, just as they did for me on the claims entry portion. And, so far, the tech support has been exemplary.

wait, you use Practice Mate for your clearinghouse? You don't just do the Office Ally HFCA upload?

Why do you do it that way? Perhaps I am missing out on something.

Leslie, when you get a free moment, can you explain how you are using AC and PracticeMate? Are you coding your visits in AC and somehow uploading it to PracticeMate, or are you coding and billing from PracticeMate? Or are you billing from AC through the simple OfficeAlly Upload to their clearinghouse, and receiving your EOBs electronically into PracticeMate (which is really what I want to do at this point).

Right now I am double entering into Practice Mate. I think it is better across the board than AC as far as modifiers etc go than AC. So, I do not use the billing part of AC but enter my claim info into Practice Mate. Previously I entered both claim submissions and postings into my PM program called Visionary. But they have been bought out and now are acting like assinus holes so I had to quickly find some other way. However, Practice Mate does not suit me at this time) as far as practice management and account management so I still post into Visionary. Very complicated and ridiculous but I hope it will all be temporary. I am considering some big changes.

Hi Leslie,
We used to use OA/PM. When we used it you were able to import AC demoraphics into their database directly. Don't remember how. They used to have really good customer service who helped us do it.