Income = volume X payer mix X collection rate
As you get enrolled in insurance panels with every company, make an excell spread sheet that has all the CPT codes you will bill for while doing inpatient work.
Then make columns for each insurance company and what their reimbursement rate is for each of those codes.
Then you will need to keep track on another excell spread sheet your payer mix for each month, or quarter, or whatever. You need to know what % medicare, medicaid, Regence, Cigna, UHC, etc you are seeing.
Then you can create another excell spread sheet that will autocompute your level 2 follow ups and new pt codes and discharge codes into a blended average. With this key sheet, you can then see exactly what your rate of earnings can be when you calculate with different volume numbers.
Inpatient psychiatry has so many insurance companies that will show up. You will have a % that you simply aren't paneled with. Who will do the paneling for you? is it even worth it for 1 patient? or 5 patients per year? There will still be out of pocket expenses for inpatient stays. Count on 20% kicked to the patient.
You will need your own billing person (employee to do all of this for you) or you will need to contract with a billing company that will take 5-10% of collected dollars. I've seen as low as 3-4%, but harder to find, and quality may be ... outsourced, even though CMS says you can't use international sources...
It's possible this could work out well and be a more efficient means to capture the highest rate of pay. But I suspect for most this is a way of the hospital to punt the headaches and cost burden on to you until you get fed up and leave after 1-2 years. You end up being a cheaper locums...
We did even get into the DRG / capitated payment insurances. Some companies will give a lump sum to the hospital that will be inclusive of the physician professional fees and simply won't look at your claim submissions. So how do you negotiate with this hospital to get paid for these capitated insurances?
Outpatient psychiatry can already have collections concerns. Image the population more typical of inpatient. Phone number? are the phones VM full? Or even working? Is the address their's or the parents that just kicked them out? Did they just lose their job for the crisis that lead to be in the hospital?