Q: How much do you charge for your services?
A: The fee we charge is always a flat percentage of gross receipts plus postage. Depending upon the specialty of the practice and the volume of the charges, it is typically 4% to 5% (plus reimbursement for postage) for individuals and small groups and less for larger groups (5 or more physicians). We do not "nickel & dime" our clientele by charging them for specially requested reports, documentation, or data which occur from time to time.

Q: Do you offer a contract?
A: Unless a prospective client INSISTS on binding our relationship with a legal contract, we prefer to work without one. This causes us to constantly strive, and succeed, in keeping our clients happy with the service we provide.

Q: What methods of payment do you accept and how is the money handled?
A: We accept cash, checks, money orders, and credit card payments phoned into our office. Physicians who agree to accept credit card payments must decide to either absorb the fee charged for these transactions OR have us instruct your patients that THEY MUST PAY this fee for the convenience of using their credit card. These payments are either deposited into our trust account, to subsequently be disbursed to our clientele, or directly into our client's bank account.

Q. What specialties do you currently handle?
A. At the present time we specialize in anesthesia (in both hospital and outpatient surgical centers) and pain management billing. We also currently perform billing for orthopedic, Ob/Gyn and surgical assistants. We have a great deal of experience in billing for neurology, ENT and family practice. We can accommodate most any specialty. 25 years of performing anesthesia billing has exposed us to the broadest range of procedure coding and physician's services.

Q. How fast can you get our account going?
A. We will start immediately. From start to finish it can take an average time of one week to 3 months, depending on the circumstances for each client. We will give you a more specific time period once we have had the opportunity to analyze your practice.

Q. How do we get the required information to you?
A. There are several ways for your office to send in your billing, including the following:

Standard Mail - just place your documents into one of our pre-paid, business reply mail envelopes and mail to our office.

Fax - send the completed records to our office on a timely basis... daily, weekly, bi-weekly.

Internet transmission of scanned records - Dependent upon the compatibility of both computer systems and the expense of installing the necessary upgrades. Enables you to quickly transfer files from your computer to ours, safely and securely. (Encryption software also required).

Q. How do we report when treatments are given, so that you are able to generate a claim on our behalf?
A. We must receive a completed superbill (treatment form), which has been signed by the physician rendering the services. This form must contain the following information (may vary):
*Patients name
*Name of insurance carrier
*CPT code(s)
*ICD-9 code(s)
*Referring physician's name and their UPIN number
*Any/all applicable modifiers
If your practice does not currently use this type of form, we can design one for you.

Q. How often should we send our new billing to you?
A. As often as you like. We recommend, however, that our clients send us their billing on a daily or weekly basis.

Q. What information is needed in order for your office to generate a claim on our behalf?
A. We normally require the following:
*A current copy of the Patient Information Form
*A copy of the patient's insurance card (front and back)
*The patient's first superbill (treatment form)

With respect to inpatient/outpatient anesthesia services, we only need a copy of the patient's information form (aka "face sheet", or "admissions form") and the anesthesia record. Although it would be very nice if we could also receive copies of the patient's health insurance card, this often isn't conveniently available. If the patient's information form provides the insurance policy numbers as well as the remittance address, this is acceptable.

Q. Do we have to report the insurance payments received in our office to you?
A. It is vital that we receive this information, so that we can enter the insurance carrier's payments and generate the necessary patient statements for those accounts which still may have a balance due. You can either send us the original EOB's (front & BACK!) along with new billing, send them via fax, photocopy and mail them to us, or even scan them and send it electronically.

Q. How do we report payments received from our patients, for both co-payments and patient billing?
A. You can report a patient's co-payment, made at the time of service, on their superbill (treatment form) for that day's treatments. You can also report all of the patient's payments, received in the mail, by keeping a Payment Log. A payment log enables you to report all payments received in your office, using one simple form. If you do not already use this type of form in your practice, we can custom design one for you.

You can also report all of the patient's payments, received in the mail by making a copy of the check and attaching it to their patient statement remittance (if returned).

Q. How often will our patients be billed?
A. Any patient in our system will receive a bill for any balance due, once a payment has been received from their insurance carrier. Patients are billed on a monthly basis. Patients having no insurance will be encouraged to pay their bills promptly. We are willing to set up payment plans, depending upon the manner in which our clients desire them to be offered and implemented. We want our clients to feel as comfortable with the manner in which this billing is done as if they were performing it themselves.

Q. What happens if we accidentally omitted some of the information contained on the required forms, and we already sent them to your office?
A. If the omitted information is of sufficient importance that it prevents us from billing the charge(s) or, by our knowledge, necessary for payment to be processed by the insurance carrier, we will either call your office or fax the form back to you to obtain this info. If we have the ability ourselves to "fill in the blank" using reference sources we will use to perform your billing (such as a referring physician's UPIN) we will do this as a courtesy to you and your staff, to assist in gathering the information quickly, and to avoid timely filing deadlines that are imposed by many insurance carriers.

Q. How do you handle non-payments from a patient?
A. We typically send out four statements to such patients. After 120 days (depending upon the medical specialty and our knowledge of the insurance carrier involved) we recommend that the account be turned over to a collection agency. If you are not already affiliated with a collection agency near you, please let us know. We recommend that interest be applied to accounts which has not received a payment within a 30 day period. We would apply this entirely at the discretion of the physician.

Q. How do you handle non-payments from an insurance carrier? (denials, etc.)
A. We must first determine if the denial, whether in part or in full, is valid. If the denial is valid it must be written off. If the denial is not valid, as in many of the cases, we will request that the carrier reprocess the claim. Unfortunately, many carriers will require that the claim be resubmitted on paper via snail mail. Although we do not charge additionally for this service, we will ask to be reimbursed any related expenses for postage.

Q. We are having trouble tracking authorizations, can you help?
A. No. For your own benefit, we believe that authorization tracking is best done in-house, by the person who handles the scheduling.

Q. How many clients are you equipped to handle?
A. We will adjust the size of our staff to meet the needs and volume of our own business. We will consider any practice, regardless of their size, and ensure we will be prepared to handle all of our clients needs in that process.

Q. Why do you charge a registration fee (set up)?
A. When you first arrange for our services there will be many procedures that need to be followed. This can include getting you set up with our clearinghouse, with the carriers, creating in-house forms, establishing your fee schedule, and creating your database We invest a tremendous amount of time and energy providing these services to you, all of which take place before generating your first claim, and feel that we should be fairly compensated for doing so. There are occasions when we have discounted this fee in the past, depending on the individual circumstances.

Q. Do we have to collect every co-payment?
A. Yes. Not doing so is considered to be fraud and it is also a possible violation of the contract entered between the patient and their insurance carrier...and even the provider and their own contract with the insurance carrier! It is not uncommon, however, for physicians to occasionally desire to extend courtesy to friends and other physicians by forgoing collection of co-payments and balances due. We encourage you to solicit the advice of an attorney, on this matter, if you wish to do this.

Q. Why will you not accept a superbill that is missing information, instead of just looking up the patient's history in the system?
A. Because this is considered fraud and abuse. All of the required information must be included on the superbill, we cannot "guess" or "assume" on your behalf exactly what services you provided.

Q. We are receiving many denials which cite that the patient was not covered at the time of service, resulting in many write offs, how can we prevent this from happening in the future?
A. Immediately start performing verification of the patient's benefits. If your staff is not already performing this, they should be.

Q. Can you code our superbills for us?
A. Our office is happy to perform coding for certain specialties, particularly for anesthesia. In all cases, it is preferable that the coding be performed by either the rendering physician or their nurse. Please discuss your needs with us.

Q. I'm starting my own practice, can you help me?
A. Our services are designed to make it easy for you. We will do everything in our power to ensure it. We offer a variety of services, which can benefit most any practice.