Folks,
Man what faith you all have in me. Thanks. Sorry to disappoint you all, but we outsource our billing just like so many others. Our old accounting firm that actually used to own our billing company (ya I know conflict of interest right?) set up a regular repeating custom journal entery in QB's for me to enter the basics from our weekly check from the billing company. Basically it has the net amount, the commission paid, and then the opposite side has the gross fees collected. But this is a compilation of all fees and carriers combined.
This is why I was so begging for better practice management features in AC and was so PO'ed when I found the numbers were badly off by so much. Not to really keep harping on old garbage but this was our the basis for our original big bad issue with Jon and AC. It was written up in articles that speak to it having some basic PM features and some of these articles are even on the website to be read by perspective customers... Needless to say we were pretty disappointed. We really loved the monthly totally and other basic number crunching.
Anyhow, here is one suggestion that I am just starting to get going. One the more I look at other programs EZ Claims and Altapoint really seem to be the best options for folks like us. EZ Claims has the advantage of already interfacing with AC fairly well, while it's disadvantage is that it reports and deep PM number crunching is not as fleible, what you see is what you get. Were as Altapoint is much more robust in terms of reports and number crunching but you either have to do double entery (not always a bad thing, hold that thought) or purchase an deal with the added program and vendor issue of the link, I would use the letter but that letter is suddenly stuck on this laptop and don't want to loose this post. I keep leaning towards Altalpoint as I see so many practices get committed and comfortable with whatever they choose so I'm leaning towards the better of the two seeing that the price is not all that different once you really load up EZ Claims with all the modules you need to make it function like a real PM and billing program, the costs really do start to level off.
But try this for starts. One of our bigger payors, without an real input from us started sending all the papers and checks to our office instead of the billing address which is the billing company. I quickly got to like this because I got to see the EOB's and see more of what was going on behind the scenes. So I set up this carrier as a customer just like any other. When you think about unfortunately, in our messed up business, regardless of who the patient is, they are no longer the real customer that we contract with, those messed up anti-trust carriers are.... Who do you have a contract with, the patient or the carrier???
So now I use the running ledger function doing a double entry type thing so the books balance. First I enter a charge on the actual amount of the check, and they I go and enter that payment in recieve payment from customer, drop down the carrier in question and BAM, now my books balance because the charges match the payment recieved. And now I can enter the check number to always reference back to the week and that check and I have a running cronilogical ledger of all payments from that "customer".
Here's my last "tip". Over the neyt few months once I settle on a PM module, I am going to contact all my major carriers and one at a time (I've got time, go slow and use it to your advantage) have then stop sending my papers, eob's and checks to the billing address and instead send them to us at our regular address, making the office the billing address. Now I've got all the money and paperwork coming to and thru us. At the same time I am either going to have a private contractor help us set up our PM with the carriers laid out the right way, or better yet, since I will own the program, I will have the present billing people do it for us and insist that they use our new program of choice, probably AP. It's good I was just really trying to wait Jon out, but our situation stinks and I need to take back control. Anyway, now any time we care to pull the trigger I can tell the billing company to take a hike, since they have disappointed us so badly...
And to the idea of double entering. I believe it was Vinny who I had this conversation with. It was his belief that double entering, once by the doc in AC as he/she creates the invoice based on their charting with the codes and all, and then re-entering them in the PM of your choice is like have a daily chart review and it keeps the doc and the biller in sync and watching out for one another. I was entering the major visit codes in QB's but not posting charges or payments, I never got that far. But it forced me to look at Nancy's coding every invoice and every visit. I know most of these patients and how long she spends in the room with them. As always, if anything she was frequently under billing, because all these SOB's have doctors scared out of their wits... But she's human and every once in a while I will catch a real boo-boo and it allows me to hold that invoice until she and I have a chance to talk about it and make sure we get it right... With AC at my disposal I have the chart notes right there to double check the chart verses what she gave me to submit and that helps a lot. Again I see so many things like how many issues she discussed or reviewed and I can throw it back at her for a new or different code. Again most of the time she under values herself... This business sucks the big one, it really does. We need to eliminate this aspect of "the game". It is such Bull....
Let me go, Just waking up after being at the office 'til almost 4 am working on getting us all switched over to the new tower. AC swapped over and reset her path like a champ, really she did.... THANKS JON!!! But the drivers and software for our HP AIO's absolutely suck. They almost always get hung up with a svchost.eye problem. I've half learned how to deal with this but what a pain. I don't think I'll ever buy another one of their products again. They are so don't give a CCHIT about the customer and their issues with their drivers it is unreal... And I'm convinced that it is their spyware in that software, driver set that is the issue. What bull.
Anyhow, have a great weekend....
Paul
