Revenues soar 30% after outsourcing billings
Revenues soar 30% after outsourcing billings
Increased revenue, reduced hassle
Billing for home infusion can be difficult for all but the most seasoned reimbursement professional. And how is a small independent agency going to afford the high-powered reimbursement professionals it needs? A home health and respiratory therapy agency in Springfield, MA, has found an answer. Centennial Home Health said goodbye to billing and reimbursement problems and as a result, realized a 30% increase in revenue.
The answer, says Steve Cashton, chief operating officer of Centennial Home Health, was his agency’s switch to Providence, RI-based Health Care Automation’s (HCA) Home Infusion Billing Center. While Centennial does its own pre-billing, prior authorization and documentation, HCA generates all billing and manages Centennial’s accounts receivable. The results have been impressive, Cashton says.
"We recognized more revenue than we ever had before with the same level of care. We now have more accurate billing, where before we were losing opportunities to bill. Our cash collections have almost doubled, and as a result our days [sales] outstanding have dropped."
Letting HCA do Centennial’s billing was seamless, Cashton says. As a user of HCA’s IV Solution software, Centennial simply had to give HCA the OK to go ahead with billing.
"What’s unique about us is we use the very same software that our clients use," says Patti Bedard, marketing and communications supervisor for HCA. "So once the agency provides the product and services to patients, those charges are entered into the software and automatically transferred [via Multi-Site Solution telecommunications software] to our billing software. And then we do the billing for them."
With staff specializing in home infusion reimbursement and billing, Bedard says, HCA provides expertise in all forms of reimbursement, including complex managed care contracts.
Operating for less than a year, the billing center has three clients and is actively seeking more. You can select the depth of HCA’s billing services, ranging from consulting and basic reimbursement training to taking over specific portions of your billing load, such as older accounts or insurance verifications. HCA is paid a percentage of collections.
However, the software also can assist start-up agencies. By reducing the necessity to hire an in-housing billing staff, it allows a start-up to concentrate on providing care rather than collections.
Such was the case for Home Health Services, a regional home health care provider based in St. George, UT, with a service area that covers Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
"We started the home infusion company in Las Vegas as a start-up company to complement our home care business," says Jim McDonald, vice president of information management for Home Health Services. With HCA handling the infusion agency’s billing and accounts receivable, McDonald says, Home Health has kept its costs down in several ways:
• Manpower.
"We figured it would take the equivalent of a full-time person making $40,000 a year to do what they would do for us, so we signed a one-year contract," he says.
• Equipment and space.
"It’s not only staff but also the space, and we are going into a fairly small space," he says. "Now we just need a couple of stand-alone workstations for the pharmacists, and one is linked to HCA’s billing center. So we don’t have to go out and buy a $6,000 or $7,000 server and do all the maintenance that comes along with it."
McDonald says it appears that Home Health will break even in the first year of its contract with HCA.
"My initial feeling is that we’re pretty comfortable with the relationship, and it may be worth continuing," he says. "We have to consider our volume at the end of the first year and review the costs vs. the benefit at that point."
[Editor’s note: For more information on Health Care Automation’s Home Infusion Billing Center, call (401) 272-6880.]
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