Anesthesia Billing Companies

[Airlife91]

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My group is interviewing new billing companies. We are a 25 physician-only private group covering a tertiary care center and stand alone ASC. We use Epic for our hospital cases, and a crappy ipad based program for the others. We have had the same billing company (a local group) for many years. That company might close up shop, or possibly be absorbed by some of the billing companies we're interviewing. We have a ****ty payor mix - lots of medicare, medicaid. We have some good contracts with private payors (I think) that we want to keep/maintain.
What are some questions/concerns to bring up during the interview process?
My main questions are:
- how does the company capture charges (via epic, paper, etc) and how accurate is it? How often do charges for procedures fall through the cracks?
- how to handle disputes/denials/appeals and subsequent collection rates on these?
- how is the company dealing with surprise billing challenges, disputes, etc.
- Does the billing company review our cases/codes to ensure we are compliant and aren't leaving $$ on the table with missing information in procedure notes, etc.
What else is worthwhile asking? I have been fairly involved in advocacy regarding surprise billing, state payor changes, so I have at least some decent knowledge of it.

Any other suggestions for things to grill these companies on?

 

[Shimmy8]

Do they have an IDR team/process? That’s going to be massive need moving forward.

 

[mapa1001]

I don’t have any names as I have been out of a privately owned practice for 5 years now, but I would suggest a small company that actually cares about your success. A large billing company won’t care enough over the 5-6% to aggressively fight denials and file IDR claims.

 

[Mman]

A large billing company won’t care enough over the 5-6% to aggressively fight denials and file IDR claims.

A large billing company should be able to do it for roughly half that amount