Medical Billing Company Enhances Reporting and Reimbursement Capabilities by Switching to NueMD®
Background
CEO Jennifer Pare formed Mid-Vermont Medical Billing in Rutland, Vt., after she identified a need for qualified medical billing specialists in her geographic area. With a rapidly growing client base that included several OB-GYN offices, a family practice, general surgery practice, urology practice, pulmonary medicine practice, addictive medicine practice, chiropractor, and physicians in several other medical specialties, Pare found a need to increase her office’s efficiencies and better automate her processes.
Business Problem
A few months after opening its doors, Mid-Vermont Medical Billing was serving 11 clients. Although Pare and her team were using an automated system for their billing functions, they quickly discovered that the software was not measuring up to an increasing client load. For example, they were only able to electronically generate 10-15 reports on charges, payments, adjustments and account aging, which fell short of the 50-75 reports that clients were requesting. As a result, Pare and her team spent more than 20 hours/month calculating the other reports manually. In addition, they also spent more than 40 hours/month searching for, updating and printing patient statements from all of Mid-Vermont Medical Billing’s clients. These manual tasks detracted from time spent on following up on claims past due, and other revenue-generating activities.
On top of these inefficiencies, Mid-Vermont’s existing practice management system resulted in the following hard costs:
- $300/week ($3,600/year) in employee time spent tracking claim numbers and printing and mailing patient statements
- $245/month ($2,940/year) for postage and supplies required to mail statements
- $150/month/client ($19,800/year) subscription cost from the software vendor
Finally, because Mid-Vermont’s medical billing system could not sync with clients’ software programs, there was no real way to match up charges to patient visits, which meant that clients were not getting fully reimbursed from payers.
“In addition to all of these costs and inefficiencies, we realized that our system was not providing our clients with what they needed,” remembers Pare.
Something had to be done, so Pare began a search for a new medical billing/practice management software program that would accomplish the following goals:
- Reduce operational costs;
- Decrease accounts receivable;
- Decrease time spent compiling reports; and
- Enable her clients to increase their reimbursements.
Mid-Vermont Streamlines Operations with the NueMD Practice Management Solution
In April 2006, Pare initiated a search for a new billing system. She considered three different options, including a client server model, but finally decided on NueMD®, an Internet-based practice management solution with billing and claims transmittal capabilities.
Immediately, the Mid-Vermont team began to see results.
“When it came to preparing and sending patient statements, we could not believe the time savings with the NueMD system,” said Pare. “What used to take 40 hours each month with the old software now takes no more than 10 minutes.”
Pare and her colleagues now had access to more than 200 different reports on insurance payment trends, missing insurance information, e-claims transmissions, aging collections, appointment statistics, and other data. She was able to provide her clients with the critical information they needed to maximize their profitability.
Finally, because NueMD is Internet-based, Mid-Vermont’s clients could now have access to the same system, and take advantage of the NueMD Appointment Scheduling Module. In this way, Pare and her team were able to monitor patient visits and, through a ticket discrepancy report, compare charges to services rendered.
“Now that our software systems communicate with one another, we have access to balances that we never knew existed before,” Pare said. “We are now certain that we are getting every single charge out to the insurance companies so that our clients can get fully reimbursed for every patient that they see.”
By switching to NueMD, Mid-Vermont realized the following quantifiable results:
- Monthly subscription costs reduced from $150/month/client to $50/month/client – an annual savings of $13,200
- Elimination of processes that had been handled manually with the old system (tracking claims, printing and mailing statements, etc.) – an annual savings of $6,540
- Accounts Receivable decreased by $2,000/month – an annual savings of $24,000
- Time savings of more than 40 hours/month preparing patient statements
- Time savings of 20 hours/month generating reports for clients
“NueMD has amounted to a huge savings in time and money for us,” Pare said. “It has made us much more efficient and professional. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”
