For over a decade now Alliance Medical Solutions, Inc. (AMS) has been providing high quality billing services to providers around the New York and New Jersey area. Currently, AMS serves 75 providers in 45 practices across a range of specialties from primary care to cardiology
Challenge
Many billing companies face similar challenges. The industry is constantly changing, and a billing company’s customers look to them for expertise. When serving multiple practices, it is important to be able to monitor billing performance and manage the billing process from end to end. Like all small businesses, billing companies also deal with day-to-day business issues around staffing and management.
“We have our staff broken up into two groups,” explains Greg Morrice, vice president at AMS. “We have a group who are dedicated to specific practices and manage their billing up to 90 days in A/R. Then, we have a group of billers who handle all the A/R higher than 90 days.” So reporting and tracking each claim is critical to success.
Solutions
AMS has been using Kareo for quite some time now. “We’ve been using Kareo since 2010, and I have been here for four years,” says Greg. “I had to learn it from scratch and found it very easy.”
Being able to do the work easily and monitor performance is critical when a company is trying to stay competitive through all the changes that can happen in a decade. With the daily work well managed, owners can focus on other business challenges.
Results
“We are very efficient,” says Greg. “Our focus is on providing high quality billing at a very competitive rate. We use the dashboard and the KPI report to break up our tasks between our two teams.” This has allowed them to keep the A/R over 90 days at less than 10% across all of their customers. And they check in monthly to review the billing for each practice, including denials, rejections, encounters, and A/R.
“I like to see trends over time so I export the reports and compare month to month for specific KPIs,” explains Greg. “Then I can see red flags and we can discuss them. Sometimes we find out it is an issue with a specific payer or maybe ERA’s aren’t set up yet. It allows us to be proactive.”
Kareo also allows the over 90 days in A/R team to be very aggressive, and they work hard to get that last 10% paid. “There will always be claims that have issues,” according to Greg. Because of this, they look for ways to help their customers find more revenue and have a more effective billing process.
They encourage practices to consider using an EHR, and many of them do. “In a perfect world that would make all of our billing more effective, but it really varies from practice to practice,” says Greg. “Some physicians are better at documenting and coding than others so some superbills are cleaner than others when we get them.” In spite of some ups and downs, Greg believes the overall benefits of using EHRs outweighs any challenges.
They also offer low cost credentialing to practices, which Greg feels benefits both the practice and AMS. According to him, it is worth the work even at the low cost because, “it has such a big impact on the billing process.” It is one way they can be sure the practice and AMS get paid correctly. “We really think of it more as part of our onboarding,” he adds.
Greg sees offering consulting on IT and EHRs as much the same thing. “We help them figure out what technology they need and how to set it up,” he explains. “We train them and support them in getting everything set up.” Again he believes it impacts the billing process and getting paid correctly so it is worth it to offer services like this for little or no cost.
They also provide some practice management consulting services. “This is a newer area for us,” says Greg. “We help them understand and participate in programs like MU and PQRS, as well as obtain recognition for PCMH, which can impact their revenue.”
Conclusion
AMS focuses on the quality of their services, and it shows in how their customers feel about them and how loyal they are. Greg says, “Most new customers come through client referrals. Our clients have been great to us.”
Through all the changes and growing their company, Kareo has been tried and true as well. “Kareo will be there for us as our business changes and grows,” says Greg. “We can depend on Kareo to continue to provide reliable support and high quality software. We could not think of a better company and product to partner with.”